This is a difficult book to score. I recognise the strength of the story-telling, the characterisations, the smells, the sights, the weather, the evocation of a tough isolated village life in 19th century rural Ireland and the grip that the very real world of the somewhat malevolent fairy spirits exterted on the community. But I quite simply didn't enjoy it. I never found excuses to put down what I was doing in order to pick this book up, and I was relieved to finish it.

Kent has a terrific feel for language, and I was intrigued by the tension created between a powerfully Catholic faith and the superstitious hold of the spirit world. The descriptions of the consequences of death and disability were living, real entities. I was moved yet uninvolved. Perhaps because I found no characters I liked enough to care about? I think it's entirely my loss that I didn't like this book more. Maybe it's one of those I shall re-evaluate as I gain more distance from it. ( )

Very interesting to hear this as an audiobook, with (I presume) genuine accents. Sometimes I did have to pay very close attention.
Novels about parenting ill or disabled children will always catch my attention, and in this one the child is both.
Set in the early 1800s in rural Ireland, Nora's daughter has died and her husband brings their young son to Nora and Martin for raising. Martin dotes on the child, despite it's obvious irritability, and tries leg massage and exercise to try to return him to the ability he had a few years earlier when they last visited. Then Martin takes ill and dies. Nora, alone with a crying child, cannot cope. Her neighbor advises she hire a young girl to help, so Nora takes on Mary.
The village is beset with problems in the winter, and rumors blame the child for them. If it isn't the child, the villagers feel it must be the herbalist/midwife, Nance, who moved to their community some time ago.
Unfortunately, Nora is determined to ask Nance for help with the child, since Nance did provide some cures for family members in the past and all the doctor had to say was "there is nothing to be done". The priest also offers no help beyond prayer & a remonstrance to attend church more often. And always, when help is needed, a crofter has to calculate the payment.
As an audiobook, it is difficult to comment on the writing. I felt there were some sections that dragged, but maybe would have felt differently if I were reading. I felt indignant at the scorn shown by the 'educated' priest and doctor to the women for trying herbal remedies, some of which I know to be harmless or potentially nutritive, while others are uncertain because people used several different common names mixing deadly with potent species. ( )

After reading Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, I immediately added The Good People to my list, because the first has become one of my favorite books. And Kent has indeed created yet another fantastic novel with this latest book!

Much like her first book, The Good People is based on a true crime from early history with which Kent has used what documents are still available and has otherwise done extensive research on the time period and places to fill in the rest of these historical fiction novels. In both books, the accused parties are female and there is a lot included in each on how that and other prejudices and beliefs of the time periods and locations may have effected the outcome of the trials. I have found the topics of both novels to be extremely interesting and have done some of my own research into the history behind them because of this interest.

But focusing just on this book, The Good People is set in 1825 Ireland and is based on the case of the death of Michael Leahy. The main characters would really probably be considered Nora, Mary, and Nance. The book starts, however, with the death of Nora’s husband. Mr. Leahy dies suddenly and has the whole town talking about how something unnatural must have been involved due to this and other omens they observe happening around this time. Other bad things begin to happen throughout the town after this, and slowly more and more people begin to think it may have something to do with the grandchild that Nora and her late husband have been raising.

Not too long before her husband passed, Nora’s daughter also died and left behind a little boy. This boy was brought to the care of the grandparents. It was clear from the start that there was something different about Michael, as he seemed half starved and couldn’t walk or talk. He would also scream all through the night and didn’t seem to be able to tell when people would talk to him. The couple hoped that he would get better with time and care, and yet even after her husband’s death, the child’s condition only seemed to worsen.

Nora hires a maid to live in with her and help take care of Michael, but eventually she comes to her wits end between her grief, her difficulties in caring for her grandson, and the shame of anyone finding out about him and starting more rumors. She decides the only person left who may be able to help is the woman in the village who is said to have “the knowledge of the good people,” or in other words, has seen and been with the fairies and knows some of their ways and ways to cure things that they have caused. Many in the village believe Micheal to be a Changeling, after all— a child whose spirit has been “swept” away by fairies and replaced by the spirit of a fairy.

Kent creates tone in such a beautiful way and the world she creates with all these old beliefs and customs of the time and place is so rich. She delves deep into the small, quiet, every day moments of a woman that slowly looses her grip on what to do and turns to the last option she sees available to her. The way the historical customs and environment are woven into every part of the story makes both books I have read from her very atmospheric and immersive. At this point, I’ll read anything she comes out with next and am very excited at the prospect!

The Good People: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ( )

This was another book that I read that maybe part of why it didn't quite appeal is it's timing. It's all about belief in Faerie and has echoes of a true case that happened and it was tragic and featured how people dealt with disability in a more superstitious time. It was tragic and horrible and while it was probably closer to the truth of things it seemed as if it was quite dismissive of things that probably worked and probably better than what doctors could do. You can imagine the stress that a parent would have been under to even think about her child being taken by the fair folk. It would be easy to look past the death and see a child having been taken and trying to imagine them with much better lives in an otherworld. I'm sure it was an ease to them.
But with children dying in Gaza, Israel and Ukraine it was hard to deal with more innocence being lost. ( )

Although The Good People by Hannah Kent is a fictional novel, the author did take inspiration from an actual event that occurred in 1826. This story, set in County Kerry illustrates how folkloric beliefs and superstitions were a strong presence among the rural people. Their traditions of curses, talk of fairies and changelings, herbal remedies and rituals to ward off evil and mischief were thriving and most rural areas had a woman who was wise in the way of herbs and treatments as well as having a strong knowledge of the fairies or “good people” are they were often called.

As a series of unexplained events occur, from deaths of locals and still births, to hens laying less eggs and cow giving less milk, people started to point fingers and apply blame. Some accused Nance, the local wise woman while others were convinced that a young child, the grandson of a local widow, was a changeling and was the cause of all the disruptions. When her husband dropped dead, Nora was devastated and started to look at her crippled grandson in a different way. She was convinced that he was a changeling and needed to go back to the fairies in order for her true grandson to be returned. She took the child to Nance, who came up with a plan that went terribly wrong.

Dark and claustrophobic, The Good People gives us characters that are trapped by ritual and gossip. The author had a great feel for her subject matter and her textured writing brings this rural, backward place to life. ( )