The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea: A Review

So, following on from the wonderful Once Upon a River, I was looking for another book in similar style that would match it. And I think, in Caroline Lea’s The Glass Woman, that I’ve found it.

The Glass Woman is set in late seventeenth century Iceland, a place I’m barely familiar with beyond a short break where my tracks passed briefly across those of the protagonists and a time about which I know very little history in my own context, let alone that of anywhere else. And yet the premise was appealing — Rosa, a young woman sent to marry Jon, a rich (relatively speaking) and powerful man who is distrusted and whose first wife is dead. And from the very beginning, I was hooked.

The timeline chopped and changed a bit as the narrative switched between Rosa and Jon and that initially confused, but as I worked out what was happening it made perfect sense as their stories headed towards an inevitable collision and a subsequent separation.

In saying what I liked about it, the old problem rears its head: how do I review without giving away too much? I shall have to stay vague. The characters were fantastic — Rosa, submissive to keep herself safe and her village fed; Jon, living in fear of the consequences of a past mistake; Pal, patiently in love with another man’s wife; jealous Pedar, the sullen misfit who works on the farm… they’re just a few of a strong cast of characters.

The land and the culture are powerful players too, and the old religion resists the oncoming of the new, and where loving the wrong person or whispering an old song can lead you to death. The harshness of a land that seemingly swallows people up — and sometimes disgorges them again — is wonderfully compelling.

I really loved this book. It drew me in, kept me absorbed, reading on and on as the inevitability of human nature came up against traditional society. There’s power, there’s greed, there’s passion and there’s death, all at play in a landscape without mercy, and too many moments of sheer, gut-wrenching drama to pick one out. Wonderful.

Thanks to Netgalley and Michael Joseph publishing for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.