{"id":153139,"date":"2021-10-06T17:13:30","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T06:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=153139"},"modified":"2021-10-08T14:15:54","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T03:15:54","slug":"review-devotion-by-hannah-kent-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2021\/10\/06\/review-devotion-by-hannah-kent-2\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Devotion by Hannah Kent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Devotion<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Devotion<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>by Hannah Kent is my favourite of the bestselling author\u2019s three books and as of now it\u2019s the best thing I\u2019ve read this year. Devotion <\/em>is a novel about faith, family, grief, refuge, trust, our humanity and the eternal. Devotion <\/em>is a love story.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Hannah<\/a>

Hannah Kent (Photo by Lauren Bamford).<\/p><\/div>\n

Like her international successes, <\/span>Burial Rites <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>The Good People, Devotion <\/span><\/i>is a historical novel which focuses attention on the untold stories of women in far-flung places, where the natural and modern worlds exist in conflict and ancient and oral belief systems clash with reformed, modern ideologies. In this novel however, it seems Kent has loosened her grip on established historical fact and further embraced the more imaginative side of her craft whilst maintaining her deep attention to the past. Simply put, there\u2019s a lot more magic at play in <\/span>Devotion. <\/span><\/i>This doesn\u2019t bloat the storytelling or jar with the reader, it works. You have to experience it for yourself. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

Devotion <\/em>is also Kent\u2019s first novel to be set partly in Australia. It tells the story of Hanne Nussbaum, a child of nature who is on the cusp of womanhood, born to a strict Lutheran family whose closed-off community is unwanted in 1830s Prussia. Hanne is friendless, save for her brother, and finds her mother\u2019s pressure towards marriage increasingly distressing. Then the miracle of Thea enters her life. Soon Hanne and those around her are on a disease-ridden ship bound for the colony of South Australia, where tragedy and beauty are felt in equal measure and the author grapples with the ancient brilliance of the continent\u2019s ecology and the frontier contact between the Lutherans and the Peramangk and Kaurna nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone familiar with Hannah Kent\u2019s writing will know that she labours on her prose for years to achieve a power, beauty and exactitude that is unrivaled. In Devotion, <\/em>the now-seasoned author takes her skill to a whole new level. This is one of those books where you can just sit and marvel at its sentences for hours. The novel is also unique in its reverence of love and the attachment that holds us together through traumas big and small. Kents fans and new readers alike will adore the book\u2019s attention to the unvoiced minds of women and the worlds of knowledge that inhabit them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devotion <\/em>was the novel I needed to get me through this moment of grief and solitude. Read it. You\u2019ll be changed too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Devotion<\/a><\/em> by Hannah Kent (Pan Macmillan Australia) is out on the 26th of October. Limited signed copies are available while stocks last.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Booktoberfest<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘One of those books where you can just sit and marvel at its sentences for hours.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":153143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6678],"tags":[723,13682,13727,1974,2332,7163,4131,4484],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Devotion.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153139"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153389,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153139\/revisions\/153389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}