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Hannah Kent

Devotion Kindle Edition

by Hannah Kent (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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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

Praise for Devotion

'Devotion is utterly original. A glorious, heartbreaking love story of infinite beauty.' - Heather Rose

'Hannah Kent's latest novel is stunning - full of magic and adventure. I fell in love with language again reading it. So beautiful and so raw. Devotion is impossibly good.' - Evie Wyld

'Such a glorious love story. And the poetry of the landscape had, for me, a Whitmanesque sensibility. A mighty impassioned cry to love and the land.' - Sarah Winman

'Devotion is rare and exquisite, both beautiful and muscular in its portrayal of love found and denied. It's a story of love as a radical act, and a celebration of place and persistence. As we've come to expect from Kent, this is masterful storytelling with pull-no-punches stakes. It's taken root in my heart.' - Kiran Millwood Hargrave

'I absolutely love this book. Hannah Kent writes some of the most transcendently beautiful prose I've ever read.' - Magda Szubanski

'Devotion is a rich, often surprising novel, written with the sort of prosody poets like me are always seeking.' - The Conversation

Print length

420 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Picador Australia
Publication date

26 October 2021
File size

3391 KB
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Review

'Such a glorious love story. And the poetry of the landscape had, for me, a Whitmanesque sensibility. A mighty impassioned cry to love and the land.' -- Sarah Winman, author of Still Life

'Hannah Kent’s latest novel is stunning – full of magic and adventure. I fell in love with language again reading it. So beautiful and so raw. Devotion is impossibly good.' -- Evie Wyld, author of The Bass Rock

'Devotion is rare and exquisite, both beautiful and muscular in its portrayal of love found and denied. It’s a story of love as a radical act, and a celebration of place and persistence. As we’ve come to expect from Kent, this is masterful storytelling with pull-no-punches stakes. It’s taken root in my heart.' -- Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Girl of Ink and Stars --This text refers to the audioCD edition.

Book Description

Devotion is another compelling story from the international bestselling author of Burial Rites, Hannah Kent. --This text refers to the audioCD edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B093BLMKF6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador Australia (26 October 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3391 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 420 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 139 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 11 in Historical Fiction (Kindle Store)
- 14 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- 15 in Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
453 ratings

About the author

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Hannah Kent

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Hannah Kent’s first novel, the international bestseller, BURIAL RITES, was translated into over 30 languages and won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, the Prix Critiqueslibres Découvrir Étranger, the Booktopia People’s Choice Award, the ABA Nielsen Bookdata Booksellers’ Choice Award and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award, the Stella Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, amongst others. It is currently being adapted for film by Sony TriStar.

Hannah’s second novel, THE GOOD PEOPLE, was translated into 10 languages and shortlisted for the Walter Scott Award for Historical Fiction, the Indie Books Award for Literary Fiction, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. It is currently being adapted for film by Aquarius Productions.

DEVOTION, Hannah's third novel, will be published in November 2021 (Australia) and February 2022 (UK & Ireland) by Picador.

Hannah’s original feature film, Run Rabbit Run, will be directed by Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale) and produced by Carver and XYZ Films. It was launched at the Cannes 2020 virtual market where STX Entertainment took world rights.

Hannah co-founded the Australian literary publication Kill Your Darlings. She has written for The New York Times, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Qantas Magazine and LitHub.

Hannah lives and works on Peramangk country near Adelaide, Australia.

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Desney King

A masterpiece - thank you, Hannah Kent

Reviewed in Australia on 28 December 2021

Verified Purchase

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!

Helpful

Jules Mckenzie

Hannah Kent at her best

Reviewed in Australia on 22 November 2021

Verified Purchase

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

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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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‘It is time, I think, to tell my story.’

Reviewed in Australia on 29 October 2021

Prussia, 1836. Johanne (Hanne) Nussbaum is almost 15 years old, living with her family in the village of Kay. Her family are part of a community of Old Lutherans, which the King wants to reform. Bound by their interpretation of God’s law, the community seeks to move to a place where they will not be further persecuted. Hanne is different. She does not fit easily into the community because she does not conform to their expectations. She is close to her twin brother Matthias but has no close friends until Dorothea (Thea) Eichenwald and her family arrive. Hanne and Thea become close.

The families of Kay are finally granted permission to leave Prussia, their voyage to South Australia is arranged, and in 1838 they board a ship. All aboard are looking forward to new beginnings. Hanne and Thea are inseparable. They love each other. But the ship is overcrowded, and the six-month journey will take its toll. Illness and poor food in cramped unhygienic conditions means that not all will survive the journey.

There are some magical moments on this horrific journey: Hanne is in touch with nature wherever she is. One of the most memorable scenes is when Hanne, on the deck of the ship, sees a whale breach. She hears the songs in nature and appreciates them.

And now I will stop telling you about the story because to fully appreciate Ms Kent’s magic, you need to read it unspoiled. The historical setting for this novel is based on the real-life settlement of Old Lutherans at Hahndorf in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. This provides the framework for a beautifully imagined story of transcendent love and devotion.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

2 people found this helpful

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