Always Home, Always Homesick: A Love Letter to Iceland by Hannah Kent
I have sat down to attempt a review of this several times and I stalled because I don’t feel like I have the words to convey how much I loved this book. Before starting I will say that if you haven’t read Burial Rites by Kent, then go do that now – its an amazing story about Agnes Magnúsdóttir the last woman to be executed in Iceland – based on a true story and Always Home, Always Homesick is in part about how that story came to be written by Kent.
I read Burial Rites back in 2015 and this was my brief review I didn’t read too much about the book’s background before reading as I don’t like to ‘ruin it’ for myself, so wasn’t aware of the origins of the characters until the end. As I was reading I was so impressed with the historical details that I did indeed wonder several times whether it was based on real people/historical documents. The story for me was a roller coaster of emotions, warming to characters at first you disliked, always wondering what the full story would be and the feelings of despair and injustice (there were tears near the end!). Such a richly detailed book, would love to see what Kent comes up with next.
In Always Home, Always homesick, Kent’s memoir which starts during the COVID-19 pandemic, takes us back to the early noughties on the journey of how she ended up visiting Iceland on a one year program at aged 17, moving half way around the world to live with complete strangers (in a time before social media and video calling were common) and deals with issues such as loneliness and the difficulties of moving somewhere when you don’t speak the language. It follows on with how the story of Agnes kept a grip on her to the point where the story became the subject of her PhD thesis and ends with Kent being invited back to Iceland to speak at a literary festival about Burial Rites.
Like with Burial Rites the gorgeous descriptions of Iceland instantly transported me to another time and place, it was difficult not to start searching the internet for photos of the locations mentioned throughout the book especially when place names I recognised came up, because like Kent I too have had a long standing love of Iceland, visiting 11 times between 2013 and 2024. My love of Iceland is why I read Burial Rites in the first place, I wouldn’t usually pick up ‘historical fiction’ but being set in Iceland was enough to draw me in. The pull of the island that comes through so strongly in Always Home… is one I recognise and resonate with albeit for different reasons and circumstances.
Some of the most pleasurable parts of this memoir is how things keep circling back, serendipitous moments like when she meets someone by chance only to find out they hold a vital clue to her research – I won’t expand more on that as I don’t want to ‘ruin the surprise’ but I’d highly recommend this book to my fellow Icelandophiles (I know quite a few now from my travels), and anyone who’s read Burial Rites, or anyone who just loves a good yarn.
I received a review copy of the book via Netgalley, thanks to the publisher, it was a solid 5/5 from me.
Culturenator 