Devotion Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Hannah Kent (Author), Emily Wheaton (Narrator), Macmillan Australia Audio (Publisher)

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Booktopia's Favourite Book of 2021.

Prussia, 1836.

Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature—she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity...until she meets Thea.

Ocean, 1838.

The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their king's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution, the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne's heart, along with the miracle of her love for Thea. Theirs is a bond that nothing can break.

The whale passed. The music faded.

South Australia, 1838.

A new start in an old land. God, society and nature itself decree Hanne and Thea cannot be together. But within the impossible...is devotion.

Shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards Fiction 2022.

Longlisted for the Australian Book Design Awards 2022 Best Designed Literary Fiction Cover.

Longlisted for the Abia Literary Fiction Book of The Year 2022.

Listening Length

14 hours and 28 minutes
Author

Hannah Kent
Narrator

Emily Wheaton
Audible release date

1 December 2021
Language

English
Publisher

Macmillan Australia Audio
ASIN

B09HSSZZK9
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	14 hours and 28 minutes
Author	Hannah Kent
Narrator	Emily Wheaton
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	01 December 2021
Publisher	Macmillan Australia Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B09HSSZZK9
Best Sellers Rank	346 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 9 in Historical Romance (Audible Books & Originals) 9 in Historical Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 53 in Historical Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews

5 star		42%
4 star		33%
3 star		18%
2 star		5%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from Australia

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Desney King

A masterpiece - thank you, Hannah Kent

Reviewed in Australia on 27 December 2021

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Oh, Hannah Kent!
With Devotion, you have sung directly to my soul. Written a masterpiece that I and countless others, I'm sure, will study in awe.
Every word, every sentence, every chapter a lesson in brilliance. A writer's guidebook. A seminal work displaying the art and craft of creative writing.
With your fearlessness and courage you have written many mysteries others - myself included - have only dared to touch upon.
'Thank you' is not enough, but it comes from my heart and from my soul.
Thank you!

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Sasha

Not my cup of tea...

Reviewed in Australia on 24 January 2022

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This was January’s book club book, and everybody’s opinions were so divided. Some loved the first half better than the second half, others thought the second half was way more interesting than the first half. I personally really enjoyed the first half of this book, and I pretty much skimmed the second half because I felt the storyline lost purpose at the half way point. The book was beautifully written, but the plot was lacking for me.
If you like this review and want to read more, follow me on Instagram - @books_and_bug

One person found this helpful

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Gillian

Entertaining well written soapy rubbish.

Reviewed in Australia on 27 April 2022

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Early part of book very insightful… imagining the fear and struggle of the first Australian settlers leaving Europe .
Became very self indulgent of the Author, used her amazing poetic capability to describe sentimentality to the point of tedium… protagonist if you can suspend reality to accept her(I did) is irritatingly self involved and selfish.. moved along fast, interesting background .. I live in South Australia., but pretty much well written soapy rubbish

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Deborah Fowler

interesting and challenging storyline

Reviewed in Australia on 7 March 2022

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I enjoyed the historical references intertwined with fiction. The characters were clearly defined and the structure of the story satisfying. Very well written. Worth reading.

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Jules Mckenzie

Hannah Kent at her best

Reviewed in Australia on 21 November 2021

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Devotion is the latest book written by Hannah Kent. Brilliant writing and descriptions, Hannah Kent takes you there!

One person found this helpful

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Not all will enjoy this, but beautifully written

Reviewed in Australia on 27 October 2021

I am not sure where to start in reviewing this book, for me it felt too much. There was too much passion, sadness, heartbreak, hope and love packed into this book.
It starts in the early 1800's in Prussia. Hanne is. a teenager who lives in a small lutheran community where she is friendless and feels unwanted by her community and family. She is different in that she can hear trees and other music in nature. When Thea, the daughter of a rumoured 'witch' moves with her family to the village, Hanne finally feels like she has found her soul mate.
Soon after this, the community is funded to make the move to Australia to establish a new lutheran community. The six months on the ship out to Australia is gruelling and an event occurs that provides a real twist in the story. After this event I cannot say I enjoyed the book nearly as much, as it took on a more supernatural tone.
I think I will be in the minority with my opinion on this as the book is very beautifully written and certain characters struck a chord with me.

3 people found this helpful

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Historic settlement of South Australia told through a poetic love story

Reviewed in Australia on 20 November 2021

4★
“Why do men bother with churches at all when instead they might make cathedrals out of sky and water? Better a chorus of birds than a choir. Better an altar of leaves. Baptise me in rainfall and crown me with sunrise. If I am still, somehow, God’s child, let me find grace in the mysteries of bat-shriek and honeycomb.”

Hanne is a teenaged girl from a devout Lutheran family in 19th century Prussia. Her father is a fairly strict elder, her mother is beautiful and loving, but she’s undemonstrative – not a cuddly, hugging sort of mother. Hanne is tall and coltish, with long legs that occasionally stumble.

“Here she is, the cuckoo born to a songbird. The odd, unbeautiful daughter.”

Her twin brother, Matthias, is her closest friend and ally. They used to curl up together as babies and youngsters, but now that they’re in their teens, Matthias sleeps up in the loft, and Hanne is forbidden to join him, although she doesn’t really understand why. They have been a part of each other for so long, that she feels the loss badly.

She doesn’t seem to fret that she has no girlfriends because she has always had Matthias, but now she relies more than ever on the companionship of her beloved forest with all of its sounds and music. She hears the melody and hums and whispers of life everywhere. Her mother does understand this and sometimes sends her to pick mushrooms, knowing that it is a happy respite for Hanne from women’s work at home.

“I was forever nature’s child. It is probably best to say this now. I sought out solitude. Happiness was playing in the whir of grass at the uncultivated edges of our village, listening to the ticking of insects, or plunging my feet into fresh snow until my stockings grew wet and my toes numb.”

A new family moves to the village from a different area. The mother is a Wend, from a Slavic community, and rumour has it she is a ‘Hexe’, a witch. But the father is German, and they have moved to the village to escape religious persecution just as the Lutherans did, so Hanne’s family is prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Their daughter, Thea, is Hanne’s age, but Hanne isn’t interested in meeting more people. She prefers to be alone in the forest, listening to the magic there.

“Suddenly I heard stick-break, the cracking of wood, and someone appeared out of the fog.

She was an apparition walking between hazy columns of trees, her outline growing clearer as she walked. It seemed, for one small moment, that we were underwater. I saw her breath stream as she heaved a crooked weight of kindling; I saw her through the cloud of my own breath and held it, the better to see her.

She looked up and, seeing me watching her, stopped.

I exhaled.

The air hung with water. Held its own breath as we regarded one another.

The girl freed a hand from her bundle of sticks. I watched as she raised it, uncertain, then lifted my own palm.

‘I thought you were a ghost,’ she said. Her voice was low. Unsteady.

‘I thought you were too.’

‘You scared me.’ She hoisted the bundle of kindling onto her hip and approached me through the fog. ‘I’m Thea.’

I remembered myself. ‘Hanne.’

The mist between us thinned as she drew closer. Her face was round, smooth-cheeked, and I saw that her hair was white-blonde, her eyebrows fairer than her skin. It looked, not unpleasantly, as though she had been dusted with flour.

Against the silence of the forest, her footsteps upon the twigs and needles sounded impossibly loud.

‘You’re not, then?’ She continued walking until she was standing an arm’s length away. I could see that her eyelashes were translucent, surrounding eyes that were deeply blue. Fathomless blue, winter’s blue.

‘What?’ Water dripped from the tree above me and fell inside my collar. Trickled down my back.

She smiled. ‘A ghost.’

I noticed then that, while her front teeth were small and neat, those next to them stuck out at an angle. It gave her a hungry, slightly wolfish look.

‘No. I don’t think so. Unless I died in my sleep.’

‘Maybe both of us died in our sleep, and here we are, two ghosts. Telling each other we’re alive.’

I laughed. For a moment I wondered if there could be truth in what she said. The mist had thickened, and with her white hair it looked as though she might suddenly be absorbed into the cloud about us.”

I liked the quick rapport between the two young outsiders, and they do become great friends. Hanne begins spending a lot of time with Thea’s family and comes to understand Thea’s mother’s special skills as a midwife and herbalist.

When the villagers learn that they are no longer safe in this village, they arrange passage on a ship to create a new settlement in Australia. Hanne is stunned when they sail out of the rivers and into the vastness of the open sea.

“The good Lord knows, if I could live any moment of my life over again, it would be that one. Ribs divided, heart devouring the knife-edge of beauty. To see the ocean for the first time, every time. Her hand in mine.

Holy blade that guts us with awe.”

The six-month voyage is horrific. Quarters are cramped, much of the food has gone off, and the water has spoiled. By the time they arrive, their numbers have dwindled due to typhus and other diseases, with bodies buried at sea or onshore, if they were near land.

The girls were separated at the beginning of the trip, as Hanne had to bunk with her mother and baby sister in the family quarters, and Thea was put in the bow of the ship with the single women. Later. as sickness spread, Hanne was moved to the bow as well, and the two proclaimed their devotion to each other.

The writing is exceptional. Here is one descriptions of how Hanne feels when she is at one with a tree or a plant.

“One day I stood beside a banksia loud with honeyeaters and nectar. The music lifting from the tree was so joyful, I joined my voice to its singing, and as I sang, I thought of Thea. I yearned for her and I yearned to be absorbed by the banksia, and in the rising key of all the strains of growth, I felt the banksia admit me and we were together. We knew what it was to bud and blossom and eat the light. I felt the birds upon me like a visitation from God. That is how it happened.”

The author has written the story around comprehensive research of the journey of these European settlers who were fleeing religious persecution, just as the English pilgrims sought freedom in America. The local Peramangk people are credited with saving these uninvited, ill-equipped foreigners from starving, although the immigrants later chased them away from the livestock and gardens they established on Peramangk land. I'm sure the fact that South Australia was settled by free settlers, not convicts as the other states were, wouldn't have made the local indigenous people any happier.

But mainly, this is a love story, with passions running high and overshadowing everything else. These are girls in their teens. There is no question that it is praiseworthy for the writing alone, and I enjoyed the history. I did become impatient with Hanne’s continuous, overflowing of declarations of love. For me, this is a case of sometimes less is more. (I know, I know, this review is long, but almost half of it is Kent’s glorious prose!)

I enjoyed her debut, "Burial Rites", about an historic trial in Iceland, and her second book, "The Good People," about Ireland and its dangerous wee folk. It was a nice change to see her turn her talent to where she grew up herself.

2 people found this helpful

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P. G. Harris

Australian Gothic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 April 2022

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Devotion is about an austere Lutheran community in rural Germany in the early years of the 19th century. Persecuted for their beliefs, they have been excluded from the state sanctioned church and their pastor has been sent into exile. Eventually salvation comes in the form of a benefactor willing to fund a ship to take them to Australia and a new life.

The book is narrated by Johanne Nussbaum, a shy and awkward girl, an outsider who prefers the company of the natural world to that of her peers. Her life is changed when a new family, the Eigenwalds and their daughter Thea come to the village.

Devotion is, at its most superficial, an historical novel, based on the real life emigration of German Lutherans to Australia. It also pays some attention to themes of colonialism and environmentalism. It is fundamentally, however, a devastatingly powerful love story. Beyond that, it was only when I was very near the end that I realised its true ancestry. It is a story in which a young girl finds herself estranged from society and feels deprived of her parents’ love. It has strong elements of witchcraft and the supernatural. It is a book of high passions and emotion, to the extent that while thoroughly enjoying it, I could only read it in short bursts, it is so intense. It is a novel in which love transcends death. It is a book in which the supernatural elements include an entity which sucks the life out of other creatures. In short Hannah Kent has written a genuine, 100% authentic gothic novel.

All of that aside, it is beautifully written, strongly evoking the touch and feel of the German Forests, the horrors of the cramped six month voyage to Australia, and the struggle of life in the new world. Kent is also skilful in portraying the petty jealousies of a small community, and enormously touching in her depiction of the central, and eventually triumphant love story.

Jane

Wonderful book,beautifully written. Didn’t want it to end

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 February 2022

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Loved this book. Have read Burial Rites which is so sad . This was really moving. Couldn’t put it down at the same time as not wanting it to end.

2 people found this helpful

Jessica Jones

A beautiful novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 February 2022

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I loved this novel. The writing was absorbing and the central relationship was beautifully depicted. A fascinating read.

2 people found this helpful

Anónimo

Dañado

Reviewed in Spain on 13 May 2022

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Ha llegado el paquete abierto y el libro manchado.

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Devotion Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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