The glass woman : a novel

Title:

Author:

Lea, Caroline, author.

Personal Author:

Lea, Caroline, author.

ISBN:

9780062935106

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Physical Description:

392 pages ; 24 cm

Abstract:

In the tradition of Jane Eyre and RebeccáThe Glass Woman by Caroline Lea in which a young woman follows her new husband to his remote home on the Icelandic coast in the 1680s, where she faces dark secrets surrounding the death of his first wife amidst a foreboding landscape and the superstitions of the local villagers.

Subject Term:

Arranged marriage -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Iceland -- History -- 17th century -- Fiction.

Genre:

Gothic fiction.

Historical fiction.

Mystery fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION LEA	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Main Library	Book	FICTION LEA	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION LEA	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A tale in the tradition of Jane Eyre and Rebecca, in which a young woman follows her new husband to his remote home on the Icelandic coast in the 1680s, where she faces dark secrets surrounding the death of his first wife amidst a foreboding landscape and the superstitions of the local villagers

"Haunting, evocative and utterly compelling. The Glass Woman transports the reader to a time and place steeped in mystery, where nothing is ever quite as it seems. Stunning." -- Tracy Borman, author of The King's Witch

"Piercing.... Devastating and revelatory." -- New York Times Book Review

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.

She 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 attic. When she begins to hear strange noises from upstairs, she turns to a local woman in an attempt to find solace, but the villager's words are even more troubling.

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.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A young woman caught in a loveless marriage faces dangers real and imagined in 17th-century Iceland.The second novel by Lea (When the Sky Fell Apart, 2016) follows nave young Rsa, who marries Jn, the rich but troubled leader of a village many miles from her home, in order to provide for her sick mother. Once installed in his home, she labors alone for most of the day with housework and is often deserted by Jn at night. Shunned by most of the villagers, she is befriended by a couple of the older women, who overcome their fear of Jn to teach her about life in the village between the sea and volcanic mountains and tell her disturbing stories about the sudden death of Jn's first wife. When Rsa hears strange noises from a locked attic at night, she starts to wonder how safe she is. The book is charged with the dark energy of the Icelandic Sagas and the country's bleak proverbs, which provide epigraphs for its chapters. Lea effectively communicates the isolation and dangers of the landscape in which the story unfolds as well as the tension between Christianity and the Nordic religion it attempts to supercede. Written primarily from Rsa's point of view, the novel also occasionally shifts to Jn's. While some readers may find the novel slow going and may chafe at a romantic subplot involving Rsa's too-good-to-be-true childhood sweetheart, who follows her to her new home, Lea uses an unusual setting to good effect, amplifying the impact of both an alluring but hostile landscape and a closed society on a vulnerable young woman. Without diminishing the mythic impact of the novel, she closely and sensitively examines the more ordinary psychological challenges her characters face.A haunting novel delivers chills. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.