This is my first Hannah Kent novel and after reading the book I need to change that and read all of her backlist it was that amazing. Will be in my top reads for this year it is such a beautiful and lyrical novel on love and nature. It took me a few pages to get into it and once I got to the halfway mark where story really kicks into another level I couldn’t put it down and by the end the book destroyed me (in a good way). A must read for 2022 you can’t let this one pass you by.

Hanne and Thea, two girls on the brink of womanhood, and their developing relationship over the Then and Now, in Prussia, on the ship and in Australia form the centre-piece of Devotion. Hardship, tragedy and unending grief are followed by hope and enduring love ... ‘All that night, I composed hymns to the sound of her heart. Hymns that might hold its steady beat in perpetuity, once she was wed and gone from me.’ At times moving, at times disquieting this is a truly extraordinary, mystical-realist journey made believable by the sublime writing of Kent. And as for Kent. A word-weaver, her writing is sparklingly lyrical, her prose magically bewitching. Time and again, I paused, re-reading a phrase or sentence lured by the striking and unique beauty of the language, the rhapsody of sensations. (How could anyone not be completely enthralled by the account of the pig’s experience as it’s about to be slaughtered?) Kent is a talent like no other. I urge you to read this novel.

“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 mystery of bat-shriek and honeycomb.” My thanks to Pan Macmillan Picador for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Devotion’ by Hannah Kent,in exchange for an honest review. I have read both of Hannah Kent’s previous novels, ‘Burial Rites’ and ‘The Good People’, and found both beautifully written works of literary historical fiction. In ‘Devotion’ Kent again has written a haunting tale that focuses on a small community of devout Christians living in Prussia. Opening in 1836 ‘Devotion’ is the testimony of Hanne, a young woman born into a community of Old Lutherans. Hanne is a child of nature though now as she is turning fifteen she will soon be expected to assume a more conventional place in the community; to marry and bear children. When a new family moves into their village Hanne finds a kindred spirit in Thea, whose mother is rumoured to be a ‘hexe’, a witch. Eventually a forbidden love blossoms between them. Due to the threat of religious persecution the community is forced to worship in secret. Then they are granted safe passage to Australia, where they will be free to worship. Yet they face a brutal sea journey lasting six months. The journey will also test the bond between Thea and Hanne. This was a beautiful tale that took an unexpected direction halfway through. I won’t expand on this in order to avoid spoilers but it left me stunned. The horrors of the long sea voyage is tempered by the lyrical beauty of Hanne’s observations throughout and especially of the landscapes of Australia as the community establishes itself there. While ‘Devotion’ portrays a fictional community, Hannah Kent acknowledges in her Author’s Note: “In writing this book I do not seek to glorify, simplify or sentimentalise the colonisation of Australia. The land ‘settled’ by the Old Lutherans who established Hahndorf and other villages in the Adelaide Hills had been inhabited for millennia by the original custodians of the land, the Peramangk people.” This recognition of the sovereignty of the land was a very important element and further enhanced my appreciation. Overall, I found ‘Devotion’ an exquisitely written historical novel, meticulously researched, a lyrical celebration of nature and a moving love story with an inspiring mystical perspective. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

Devotion is the third novel by best-selling award-winning Australian author, Hannah Kent. Hanne Nussbaum is almost fifteen when the Eichenwald family join their Old Lutheran community in the Prussian village of Kay. Hanne is friendless, connecting better with the sky and the trees, the river and the stars, than people, her twin brother Matthias the only one who understands her even a bit. “Even as a young child I had felt that girls forsook on whim and offered only inconstant friendship. Allegiances seemed to shift from day to day like sandbanks in a riverbed and, inevitably, I found myself run aground. Better to befriend a blanket of moss, the slip-quick of fish dart. Never was the love I poured into the river refused.” But Anna Maria Eichenwald seems to see her, to understand her instantly. When Hanne encounters Anna Maria’s daughter, Thea for the first time in her beloved forest, there’s none of the scorn the other village girls aim at her. Instead, Thea offers acceptance and interest. They quickly become close, trying to be together at every opportunity. Their community, having rejected the King’s union of the Protestant Churches, has to worship in secret; their pastor has fled, their church, bell removed, is locked by soldiers. The chance to leave, to emigrate to another land, a place where they will not be persecuted, is welcomed by the elders, but Hanne fears it will tear her from Thea: will the Eichenwalds join them? After an emotional leave-taking, a tiring journey to the port and delays, some two hundred souls finally cram into a ship with eighty berths for a six-month journey to South Australia. Crowded together, with less than optimum nutrition and water from tainted barrels, illness inevitably strikes, and a reduced number arrives at their longed-for paradise, the place they will build, Heiligendorf, their joy tempered by grief. Years later Hanne shares what she saw, heard, took part in: “I have described what has happened to me, and what I felt, and what I continue to feel. Gathered up and thrown on the wind to be wound on the air. To stir leaves and gutter candles and fill the sails of ships. I am unthreaded of it. I am the empty eye of the needle.” Once again, Kent gives the reader a masterpiece, a tale of love and grief and steadfastness. She describes a community persecuted for their beliefs, but who, when free to follow those beliefs, display less tolerance than might be hoped. The depth of her research into so many aspects of the lives of such a community is apparent on every page. Emotions are expertly rendered. Her prose is often exquisite, poetic: “The wings drew closer, beating against the sky. Rippling it. Cut the light with feathered knives” and “I had felt affirmation in my bones and blood and the wick of my soul had caught flame, had burned bright” and “And the birds, ever here, ever singing, a liturgy to govern the hours towards gods of cry and shriek and call. Kookaburra, magpie, shrike-thrush, wagtail. Currawong, crow, boobook. Scripture may no longer roll off my tongue in smooth certainty, but my mouth is still full of spirit. Holy Writ of living things, each one a prayer against the teeth” are examples. Hanne’s description of aboriginal dance: “The Peramangk were the first people I ever saw dancing… The music was unlike anything I had heard before. It threaded itself under my skin until I felt sewn through with sound, and then it pulled me to its source… the beauty and urgency of their movement was everything I had imagined dancing might be, their bodies shaped and held by a music that was closer to the sound I heard coming from the earth than any hymn of my homeland.” This is an absolute pleasure to read. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Australia.

Devotion is a unique story about love that transcends time. It’s also powerful as it is deeply personal to the author emotionally. Beautiful writing heightens the impact. Highly recommended.