07/22/2019
Lovely prose and the lulling feel of escape into another time and place help to balance the slow pace of this story of 1686 Iceland from Lea (When the Sky Fell Apart ), in which religion has replaced witchcraft, and a young woman teeters between the Church and pagan beliefs. At 25, Rosa agrees to marry a surly bear of a man, Jon Eiriksson, the “bonoi,” or community leader, of a nearby settlement. Jon collects taxes from his village, and Rosa knows he will provide for her ailing mother. Rosa travels for four days from Skalholt to Stykkisholmur to live with Jon in an Icelandic turf house perched above a seaside village, where the inhabitants fear Jon and gossip suspiciously about his first wife Anna’s death from a mysterious illness. Rosa is isolated when Jon works his farmland or fishes at sea, and because she wonders if Anna may have died from loneliness, Rosa dares to go against Jon’s wishes to seek companionship with the locals in Stykkisholmur, but she makes few friends. Mystery and potential danger linger throughout as the story builds to the reveal of what happened to Anna, but the escalation is so gradual that it’s near excruciating. Still, with its dreamy prose, Lea’s novel will satisfy readers who wish to be submerged in the ways of an old world. (Sept.)
Piercing…. Devastating and revelatory.” — New York Times Book Review
“Gripped me in a cold fist. Beautiful.” — Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton
“A fantastic, atmospheric debut.” — Times , London
“A perfect, gripping winter read. I loved it.” — Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
“This evocative debut is compelling with a brilliant twist.” — Daily Express , UK—four out of five stars
“Memorable and compelling. A novel about what haunts us—and what should.” — Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall
“A mesmerizing and visceral tale of faith and resilience, love and agency, and the corrosive effects of our deepest secrets.” — Brooklyn Digest
“Lea crafts deeply intriguing characters while bringing to life their harsh landscape. Full of emotion, mystery, and suspense, this unique love story will keep readers guessing until the very end.” — Booklist
“A young woman caught in a loveless marriage faces dangers real and imagined in 17th-century Iceland…. A haunting novel delivers chills… amplifying the impact of both an alluring but hostile landscape and a closed society on a vulnerable young woman.” — Kirkus
“Crackles with tension. Moving and atmospheric, I couldn’t put it down.” — Laura Purcell, author of The Silent Companions and The Corset
“The eerie opening brilliantly sets the scene for a suspenseful read. A tremor cracks open an ice floe and an arm appears, plunging the reader into a harsh landscape and a world of suspicions and secrets.” — Sunday Express , UK
“Mystery and potential danger linger throughout as the story builds to the reveal…. Lovely prose and the lulling feel of escape into another time… will satisfy readers who wish to be submerged in the ways of an old world.” — Publishers Weekly
“A chilling tale.” — Good Housekeeping , UK
“A gothic novel for a cold climate. Mesmerizing.” — Elly Griffiths, author of The Stranger Diaries
“Intensely written and atmospheric, with an unusual setting, this is a stark evocation of a community where fear of the outsider is rife and unsettling.” — Daily Mail , UK
“An enthralling tale of the Icelandic witch trials.” — Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars
“An Icelandic Jane Eyre.” — Sunday Times , UK
“Suspenseful, gripping and beautifully drawn.” — Cecilia Ekbäck, author of Wolf Winter
“Utterly unputdownable. Rich in superstition and mystery, it pulled me in. An incredible novel.” — Ali Land, author of Good Me Bad Me
“Tremendous. Atmospheric and beautifully wrought, The Glass Woman is both chilling and beguiling.” — Elizabeth Fremantle, author of Sisters of Treason
“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
“Like a ghost story told around a winter fire, The Glass Woman is taut, haunting, and broodingly tense. Playing out against the harsh backdrop of the Icelandic winter, it kept me hooked all the way to the end.” — Tim Leach, author of Smile of the Wolf
Gripped me in a cold fist. Beautiful.
A mesmerizing and visceral tale of faith and resilience, love and agency, and the corrosive effects of our deepest secrets.
Piercing…. Devastating and revelatory.
New York Times Book Review
Lea crafts deeply intriguing characters while bringing to life their harsh landscape. Full of emotion, mystery, and suspense, this unique love story will keep readers guessing until the very end.
A fantastic, atmospheric debut.
Crackles with tension. Moving and atmospheric, I couldn’t put it down.
Memorable and compelling. A novel about what haunts us—and what should.
A perfect, gripping winter read. I loved it.
This evocative debut is compelling with a brilliant twist.
This evocative debut is compelling with a brilliant twist.
Lea crafts deeply intriguing characters while bringing to life their harsh landscape. Full of emotion, mystery, and suspense, this unique love story will keep readers guessing until the very end.
A chilling tale.
A gothic novel for a cold climate. Mesmerizing.
Like a ghost story told around a winter fire, The Glass Woman is taut, haunting, and broodingly tense. Playing out against the harsh backdrop of the Icelandic winter, it kept me hooked all the way to the end.
Intensely written and atmospheric, with an unusual setting, this is a stark evocation of a community where fear of the outsider is rife and unsettling.
The eerie opening brilliantly sets the scene for a suspenseful read. A tremor cracks open an ice floe and an arm appears, plunging the reader into a harsh landscape and a world of suspicions and secrets.
Tremendous. Atmospheric and beautifully wrought, The Glass Woman is both chilling and beguiling.
Suspenseful, gripping and beautifully drawn.
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.
An Icelandic Jane Eyre.
An enthralling tale of the Icelandic witch trials.
Utterly unputdownable. Rich in superstition and mystery, it pulled me in. An incredible novel.
Intensely written and atmospheric, with an unusual setting, this is a stark evocation of a community where fear of the outsider is rife and unsettling.
The eerie opening brilliantly sets the scene for a suspenseful read. A tremor cracks open an ice floe and an arm appears, plunging the reader into a harsh landscape and a world of suspicions and secrets.
This evocative debut is compelling with a brilliant twist.
The eerie opening brilliantly sets the scene for a suspenseful read. A tremor cracks open an ice floe and an arm appears, plunging the reader into a harsh landscape and a world of suspicions and secrets.
Intensely written and atmospheric, with an unusual setting, this is a stark evocation of a community where fear of the outsider is rife and unsettling.
Lea crafts deeply intriguing characters while bringing to life their harsh landscape. Full of emotion, mystery, and suspense, this unique love story will keep readers guessing until the very end.
A mesmerizing and visceral tale of faith and resilience, love and agency, and the corrosive effects of our deepest secrets.
A fantastic, atmospheric debut.
A chilling tale.
An Icelandic Jane Eyre.
Piercing…. Devastating and revelatory.
New York Times Book Review
Suspenseful, gripping and beautifully drawn.
This evocative debut is compelling with a brilliant twist.
Daily Express four out of five stars
2019-06-17
The second novel by Lea (When the Sky Fell Apart , 2016) follows naïve young Rósa, who marries Jón, 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 Jón at night. Shunned by most of the villagers, she is befriended by a couple of the older women, who overcome their fear of Jón to teach her about life in the village between the sea and volcanic mountains and tell her disturbing stories about the sudden death of Jón's first wife. When Rósa 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 Rósa's point of view, the novel also occasionally shifts to Jón's. While some readers may find the novel slow going and may chafe at a romantic subplot involving Rósa'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.
