The Glass Woman

Score: 3.5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Publishing for providing me with a digital review copy of The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea.

I’ve been mulling over what to say in my review of this book. I liked it, I didn’t love it, but it is one of those stories that has stayed with me. Since finishing it a week ago I’ve found myself thinking about it fairly regularly and my feelings about the characters and the story are quite complicated.

It’s certainly an interesting tale of an isolated Icelandic existence in a time when women were not free to make their own decisions, nor be themselves, and to a large extent neither were the men (but for very different reasons). The descriptions of the places, smells, textures and sounds made the landscape feel very real, and tangible. But while we hear a lot of the inner thoughts, and learn about the characters’ histories, I didn’t feel like I really KNEW any of them or their true motivations. And some of the events and items which I think were meant to be symbolic fell a bit flat for me, and felt forced and unnecessary.

I did enjoy it though, and if you like historical fiction you may want to pick this one up. I also listened to part of it as an audiobook, narrated by Heiða Reed who was a pleasure to listen to and definitely helped with some of the name and place pronunciations. You can grab your own copy of the book by clicking below, or get the audiobook by using code ‘LatestBookCrush’ on Libro.fm

Synopsis:

Rósa has always dreamed of living a simple life alongside her Mamma in their remote village in Iceland, where she prays to the Christian God aloud during the day, whispering enchantments to the old gods alone at night. But after her father dies abruptly and her Mamma becomes ill, Rósa marries herself off to a visiting trader in exchange for a dowry, despite rumors of mysterious circumstances surrounding his first wife’s death.

Rósa follows her new husband, Jón, across the treacherous countryside to his remote home near the sea. There Jón works the field during the day, expecting Rósa to maintain their house in his absence with the deference of a good Christian wife. What Rósa did not anticipate was the fierce loneliness she would feel in her new home, where Jón forbids her from interacting with the locals in the nearby settlement and barely speaks to her himself.

Seclusion from the outside world isn’t the only troubling aspect of her new life—Rósa is also forbidden from going into Jón’s. When Rósa begins to hear strange noises from upstairs, she turns to the local woman in an attempt to find solace. But the villager’s words are even more troubling—confirming many of the rumors about Jón’s first wife, Anna, including that he buried her body alone in the middle of the night

Rósa’s isolation begins to play tricks on her mind: What—or who—is in the attic? What happened to Anna? Was she mad, a witch, or just a victim of Jón’s ruthless nature? And when Jón is brutally maimed in an accident a series of events are set in motion that will force Rósa to choose between obedience and defiance—with her own survival and the safety of the ones she loves hanging in the balance.