When I saw 'Always Home, Always Homesick' by Hannah Kent being published in Australia I couldn't wait for it to be available in Europe. So I was extremely excited to receive an early ARC from Picador via NetGalley.
This book is a memoir about Hannah's time in Iceland and her love for the country. It is written in three sections. In the first part she describes her year as an exchange student in Northern Iceland with all it's ups and downs, getting used to a new culture and climate, the loneliness, the journey to learn Icelandic and also all the friends she made and experiences she had. During that visit she came across the case of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a women who was executed in 1830 for killing a man in rural Iceland. This story didn't let her go and she decided to write a book about Agnes's life as a servant and how it lead to that event.
The second part of the memoir entails Hannah's extensive research for her first novel 'Burial Rites' which brought her back to Iceland. It is very interesting, especially if you have read the novel, to follow her search for what really happened and what life was like in Iceland in the 1800's.
In the third part Hannah is coming back to Iceland for a literary festival and we get a great insight into Icelandic literature and writers.
This book is a must read for everybody who read 'Burial Rites' and for all fans of Icelandic culture and literature!

I'll start by saying I loved every minute I spent with this book. In addition to be beautifully written, it was also fascinating in many ways, from the information provided about Iceland and its culture, to the inner life of the author, to her process of self-discovery, to the evolution of her novel set in Iceland, Burial Rites--it was all captivating.

I'd read Burial Rites some years ago now, but knew nothing about the author, so when I saw this book I was interested in the author's relationship to Iceland--how she got there and what made her fall in love with it. The book starts during the COVID pandemic in Australia. Hannah Kent is now married to Heidi and they have two children--2 year-old Anouk, and a newborn. Hannah is still recovering from giving birth when she wakes up on her birthday having had another dream about Iceland. From there, we go back in time to when she ended up being an exchange student there. She describes so well what it felt like to be in a place so different to anything she'd ever known and in a society that appears to be rather reserved and often standoffish. She describes learning the language, eating Icelandic food, what she learned, her relationship with her classmates and host families, her fears, dreams, and moments of self-discovery. I could relate to much of this, having had similar experiences (albeit as an adult) when moving to Alaska and working with Inupiaq people and being a host mother to an exchange student. I was telling my husband about some her her experiences and we were both unimpressed with the way she was sometimes treated. The narrative moves on from there, sometimes going back and forth in time as Kent writes about her stubborn fascination with the life of the woman who would become the protagonist of Burial Rites, her first novel. She tells readers about her research and the serendipitous moments that occurred in the process. Finally there is a bit where she explains how she came to write this book.

This book is so much more than a memoir and I highly recommend it.

I started reading Hannah Kent backwards. A colleague at the bookshop I worked in really wanted someone to talk to about Devotion, her third book. He asked me to read it because he said he thought it was my kind of thing. It was. It is. I loved it. After that I immediately read Burial Rites, her first book. It's a superbly told fictionalised account of the real life case which saw the last public execution in Iceland. It's a novel that wears its research lightly and which swallows you in the world of the characters but also the character of Iceland itself. This book, Always Home, Always Homesick tells the story of how Hannah ended up in Iceland as a sixteen year old and how her ongoing love for the country and its people has shaped her as a person and as a writer. The narrative is entwined with the story that spawned Burial Rites and all the research that went into it. Fascinating, beautifully written and perfectly balanced between the pull of memoir and the work of writing. One of my favourite books of 2025 so far.

If you haven’t read Burial Rites, you will want to after reading the author’s account of how she came to the story, how she researched it, and how it has never left her since.

I loved Burial Rites, a book that haunts you ever after, and so I was delighted to learn that Hannah Kent has written more about its subject. Agnes Magnusdottir and Fridrik, a young man, were beheaded when found guilty of the murder of their master, Natan Ketilsson, and Petur Jonsson, in 1830. It was the last execution in Iceland.

Hannah Kent first went to Iceland as a teenage exchange student, a huge adventure for an Australian who had never before left the country. She describes how she learned to speak Icelandic so that she fitted in better. This period in her life led to a lifelong love of Iceland and its people and a fascination with Agnes’s story. The depth of research she undertook to write the book is remarkable, although she never stops reminding everyone that her book is a work of fiction, not a history. She wanted to write from Agnes’s perspective which is not one that seems to have been taken account of previously. At times, I thought she was being quite fanciful, rather overdramatising her experiences, but she is steeped in Icelandic culture now and Icelanders are steeped in the past and in otherworldly phenomena so I suppose she is channelling that.

A very interesting and enjoyable read and recommended especially to anyone who enjoyed Burial Rites and/or to anyone who enjoys Hannah Kent’s writing in general.

With thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for a review copy.

Thanks for the ARC of this book - I really loved it and will be buying hard copies as gifts for a couple of friends who I know will also enjoy it.

I expect most people will come to this memoir having already read the author’s novels. I hadn’t - she was completely unknown to me - but I will definitely now be reading her other works.

This started out as a memoir of her year abroad in Iceland as a teenager, then moves onto her subsequent visits in later life as she conducts primary research for her novel, Burial Rites, interspersed with segments of her life in the present day as a new mother during covid.

Her writing style is clear, accessible and engaging - she manages to combine a discursive, conversational style with some really evocative and lyrical descriptions of nature and landscape around her. All the characters in the book are three dimensional and full of personality. I found it a really immersive read.

Some parts on her historical research could have been quite dry, but even having not read the novel they related to, I found them really engaging. The fact I was genuinely on tenterhooks waiting to find out if she found a copy of an obscure Icelandic book is testament to the author’s skill.

I also loved the way she weaves in Icelandic folklore and language - it really added texture and brought the people and the place to life.

I will definitely be purchasing Burial Rites as my next read

Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent explores the experience of living in a completely foreign country among strangers as a young person and the lifelong impact that has on her as a person and as a writer.

I absolutely loved this writing memoir by Hannah Kent. In it, she describes her love of Iceland, a country she first visited when she was a teenager, and which has remained like a second home to her ever since. She describes how she fell in love with its people, landscape, stories, myths and legends, and how she came to discover the haunting story of a woman who was executed for murder in 1830. This true event became, over the years, her incredibly powerful and emotional novel Burial Rites, which I read and also loved. Kent's memoir took me inside her head, into her writing life and process, and into the heart of Iceland. Beautiful and beguiling and brilliant.