Lea’s characters leap from the page - complex, vulnerable, full of fragile humanity cloaked in scarred reality. High overhead, the wind tugs a scarf of cloud over the frozen-faced moon.” The stars are clear as candles: it will be a cold night. “The night is falling fast, blackness seeping up from the horizon. “An exposed spine of stones, ten times the height of man, juts upwards, as if the earth has done battle with itself and ripped off its skin.” Her sentences surprise, delight, and provoke:
Lea is also a master of imagery and language. In addition, the author weaves Icelandic legends, tales of witchcraft, and a harsh, unforgiving form of Christianity into the story. She skillfully incorporates old ways of speaking and Nordic words into the dialogue.
Lea’s writing takes the reader to the cold, barren world of Iceland and the hard, tenuous life of fishing and scraping a living off the land. She is trapped, and there seems to be no way to escape.Īs historical fiction, The Glass Woman is superb. Although she knows it’s her duty, intimacy with her husband makes her “feel small and soiled.” Despite the efforts she makes to do as Jón directs, she concludes that “a contented marriage is only a matter of becoming resigned to the shape of one’s own discontent.”Īt every turn, Rósa is reminded that women must not speak their minds they must be silent, submissive, and respectful. Only two women speak to her, and one mutters a warning: “There is darkness in being alone here.”Īs the days and weeks unfold, Rósa discovers falseness, distrust, and rivalry, and hears unsettling rumors about Jón’s first wife. When she does walk down the hill and into the village, people stare, their expressions full of fear and revulsion, and then turn away. “The list of tasks is dizzying: washing, cooking, cleaning, mending, gutting, reaping.” Every effort Rósa makes to get to know her husband is rebuffed gradually, loneliness becomes “a slow-forming ice in her gut.”
No matter what you may hear.”įorbidden to visit the loft of Jón’s house and cautioned to avoid the villagers, Rósa’s new life is hard. You must learn how to please him.”īut later, as they approach the croft Rósa will soon call home, Pétur says: “He is a good man. During the three-day journey on horseback through the rugged land, Pétur cautions Rósa: “Jón’s rage is best avoided. Rósa’s wedding gift from her new husband is “a woman made of glass and stillness: perfect but easily shattered.”Īfter bidding farewell to Páll, the young man she had hoped to marry, Rósa is escorted to remote Stykkishólmur by Pétur, Jón’s apprentice. Set in 17th-century Iceland, Caroline Lea’s The Glass Woman features Rósa Magnúsdóttir, a young woman who marries Jón Eiríksson, widower and village leader, in order to provide for her ill and impoverished mother.
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