Redheaded Reviews: The Good People by Hannah Kent

Set in 1825 Ireland during a time when people still mostly believed that the Good People, or the fairies, played a part in their lives, centers mainly on the newly widowed Nora Leahy and the once healthy, now suddenly mysteriously crippled four-year-old grandson she is forced to raise. The book opens with the sudden death of her husband at the crossroads with various signs attending it. Nora and her husband Martin had just lost their daughter Johanna a few months ago to some mysterious wasting disease according to her husband, as she had moved away. Her husband left their child with them to raise as he was too messed up to deal with the child himself. At the wake, Nance Roche shows up to lead the keening or the hollering up to heaven to let them know that the soul of the departed was a good one that deserves to be let in.

Nance is the local handywoman or the one you turn to for a cure when you can't afford the doctor or he doesn't know what's wrong. She's an herbalist. She is also wise in the ways of the Good People and the curses they put on people and how to remove them. Nora's nephew, Daniel consults her when his wife Brigid is found asleep in the cillin where the stillborn are buried and where the fairy folk is known to take others to their side and leave fairies in their place. She gives him some bittersweet to give her to sleep deep so she doesn't sleepwalk anymore.

Nora doesn't know what to do with her grandson Michael. Her neighbor woman, Peg, suggests getting a maid for the season to help out so she goes to the hiring fair and hires Mary a young woman to help out. But she keeps Michael, the boy, trapped inside in order to avoid talk of the town. Instead, it just causes more talk. Now people are saying he is a changeling or one who has been replaced with a fairy child. And Nora is beginning to wonder. She goes to the local priest for help, but he refuses. Back then for a priest to come into your home you needed to cross his palm with a coin. But he is on a personal crusade against the old ways of fairies and such and refuses to indulge her. So she ends up accepting help from Nance who refuses to accept money for her services but if you wish to give her a small gift such as a hen or some alcohol or peat moss or potatoes she will accept that, though it's never discussed.

You just know this book is going to go wrong with talk of the changeling causing the cows not to milk and the hens not to lay eggs and probably causing the death of his mother and grandfather. It gets worse with the priest preaching against Nance from the pulpit about her pagan ways and the harm they cause. Actually, the author took a citing from an old book of the time that tells what happens to Nance and the crippled boy and she then developed a story around that. This excellent book is a fascinating look into the past and let me tell you I wished fervently that there were fairies to show up and act like good people saving this town from itself.

Quotes

If there is one thing that will sink sickness deeper into the body, ‘tis loneliness.

-Hannah Kent (The Good People p 23)

That one knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Believe me, Nora. An old broom knows the dirty corners best.

-Hannah Kent (The Good People p 32)

How hidden the heart, Nance thought. How frightened we are of being known, and yet how desperately we long for it.

-Hannah Kent (The Good People p 100)

Nora had always believed herself to be a good woman. A kind woman. But perhaps, she thought, we are good only when life makes it easy for us to be so. Maybe the heart hardens when good fortune is not there to soften it.

-Hannah Kent (The Good People p 129)