A group of villagers gathered to watch and talk, but there was one man among them who remained silent; because he knew the who the person under under the ice had been and he knew how that person had come to be there …. I wasn't all that happy with the ending. I felt there were many unanswered questions and I'd have liked Jon to survive. One thing I felt from the beginning is that Jon did not kill Anna. I am glad I was right in that respect. I actually came to like him as a character. I was caught up in the story from the beginning but in the later stages, when it reached the time when the body emerged from the icy sea and the consequences of that played out, I realised how real Rósa, the people around her and the world that they lived in had become to me.

In the tradition of Jane Eyreand Rebecca, comes The Glass Womanby Caroline Lea, in whicha 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.A new wealthy man, Jón Eiríksson, arrives in town, they say his wife has only been dead for a few months and that he is there to not only deal with some work but to find himself a local girl to marry too. A mysterious and captivating tale of love, fear and superstition, perfect for readers of The Miniaturist, The Silent Companions, and The Bear & The Nightingale.

The writing was dark and lovely, and it caught the time, the place and the atmosphere wonderfully well. The Glass Woman is melancholy and heart breaking, a tale to fall into, it is unpredictable and so so good. Loved it. Some stories she will not tell. She will choose, day by day, which truths to reveal. And, gradually, the tales she tells will become truth. In this way, she will live with who she has become. She is a woman capable of violence. She is a woman who did what was necessary. She is a woman who has survived.

The Glass Woman

I thought I might be a retelling of a traditional story, and I might have been in the beginning; but in time that story was subverted quite beautifully, and I found that the truth of this story and its characters were not at all as I had expected. 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 couldn’t help being fearful of her new husband, and of his apprentice, Pétur. She tried to please Jón, and sometimes she succeeded, but she struggled to cope with staying in their croft alone, with little to occupy her time.

She had received an offer of marriage from Jón, the wealthy leader of a settlement some distance away. He promised to look after her mother and the local community; and so, though she didn’t want to leave her mother, her home and Páll – her childhood sweetheart who she had always thought she would wed – she knew that she had to accept the proposal. She travels to the croft of her new husband, prepared to try to be an obedient wife and put aside her dreams of reading and writing. For her parents encouraged her desire to write and she delighted in the sagas and stories of her home. However, the lines between myth and witchcraft are blurred in this world and it is easy to be accused for a false word. The darkness is smothering, but I can hear the inhalations of the waves and smell the salt. The sea has been present all of my days, like lifeblood. (c) Rósa was a wonderfully engaging character and I really felt that I was living through this story with her. I understood her feelings, and I appreciated how carefully she walked the line as she tried to please her husband and to establish a life for herself.

One of the strongest elements in The Glass Woman is the Icelandic setting. The descriptions of the harsh environment, and the isolation because of this, forms the core of this historical mystery. I also found the move from, and struggle between, their Sagas to Christianity very interesting. My second reservation was that the structure didn’t work as well as it should. At first the story was told purely from Rósa’s point of view, but some way into the book another perspective was added into the mix. I completely understood the need for that second voice, it enriched the story but I wish it had been introduced a little earlier and that the transitions had been done with a little more finesse.

Retailers:

Into this epic landscape comes Rosa, who marries for practical purposes not love and who comes to believe she may be in grave danger from Husband Jon, the death of his first wife being surrounded by gossip, intrigue and dark mutterings of witchcraft.. He told her that he didn’t want his wife mixing with the people in the village; and when she approached her neighbours she found that they were reluctant to speak to her, that there was a mystery surrounding the death of the death of Jón’s first wife, and that they would say to her was that she should obey her husband. The storytelling kept me close to her, and while it moved slowly at times I realised that it had to, to catch the reality of Rósa’s situation. But the payoff is worth it: I was thoroughly captivated throughout and the ending(s) almost made me cry. I loved how The Glass Woman subverted expectations, particularly how it showed the power of gossip and hearsay in establishing 'facts' (and myths, and, in time, fairytales). In the end, practically nobody in the story plays the role they originally appear to be designed for. Both Rósa and Jón were fascinating characters to get involved with and it was a joy and a privilege to watch their development, especially Rosa’s, as this was a woman living in 1686 who was educated, wise beyond her years and knew what she wanted in life. As the book progressed so did their characters and I loved watching them evolve. The book is quite slow in pace, however, the story was so absorbing that the slowness wasn’t an issue.