True to form, Hannah Kent’s intense, lyrical prose is utterly immersive in her new novel, Devotion.

At its heart, Devotion is a delicate love story between two young women – the narrator Hanne and her soulmate Thea.

But giving their story its particular intensity is the historical context in which it’s entwined. The teenagers meet in 1836, not long before their families – part of a small, Prussian-based community of Old Lutherans – flee from religious persecution to the other side of the world, destined for the young colony of South Australia.

Kent, who hails from South Australia, drew inspiration for her fictionalised account from the real voyage of the Zebra from Hamburg to Australia, an arduous six-month journey for 187 German Lutherans, who settled in 1838 around 30 kilometres east of Adelaide, naming their new community Hahndorf (fictionalised by Kent as Heiligendorf).

Readers of Kent’s two previous acclaimed novels – Burial Rites and The Good People – will find strong parallels in Devotion. All three are set in the 1820-30s albeit in very different parts of the world, each with an almost mystical vibe as Kent explores the heavy prevailing influence of religion, superstition, folklore, witchcraft and the supernatural.

And all three are profoundly shaped by grief and death.

Kent’s acclaimed 2013 debut, Burial Rites, tells the haunting story of Icelandic woman Agnes Magnusdottir, as she awaits her execution in 1829, the last person condemned to death in her country.

Three years later, Kent released The Good People, inspired by the 1826 death of a young Irish boy Michael Leahy. He was drowned by women who, believing him to be a changeling, had taken him to the river in an attempt to banish the fairies out of him.

Death also permeates Devotion and, at the novel’s midpoint, plays a decisive role in taking the story into a completely new realm.

It happens during the Lutheran migrants’ long ship voyage – a journey that is so masterfully depicted by Kent that you can almost feel the travellers’ physical discomfort, fears and exposure to peril, along with their wonderment at the ocean’s magnificence.

Inevitably, some passengers perish mid-voyage, succumbing to disease such as scurvy and typhus – and this, curiously, includes the narrator Hanne.

While this may seem like a spoiler, it’s a key plot point. From this moment forward the novel is infused with magical realism, as the dead Hanne takes on a ghost like form, becoming an invisible witness to the ongoing journey of her family and community – and, importantly, Thea.

At first I was unconvinced by Kent’s decision to take Hanne into the “afterlife”. I felt it was a little contrived given the novel’s first half provided such a richly imagined, vivid and plausible portrayal of 1830s life in Hanne’s small community and their perilous pilgrimage. Stepping so quickly into supernatural realms felt like an aimless misstep.

On reflection I can see the manoeuvre meant Kent could allow Hanne to explore, uninhibited, her feelings for Thea in a way she couldn’t have conceivably done during her 19th century existence. In life, she was bound by the expectations of her community’s oppressive religious fervour – dancing was not allowed and physical affection rare, let alone the utterly sinful act of a queer relationship, considered so wrong it couldn’t even be spoken.

But in death, when Hanne’s ghost is largely undetectable and no rules dictate her movements, she can listen in on previously unheard conversations and watch previously unseen intimacies, helping her to understand and accept hers and Thea’s yearning to be close.

The real joy for me in this novel is Kent’s undeniable mastery of her characters and the details of their lives.

Besides the irresistible depth of the protagonists, Kent provides a vibrancy to all members of their community, from the imperious head pastor imposing his beliefs, through to Hanne’s dear twin brother who deeply mourns her loss, deftly navigating each character’s struggle to decipher the right path through life.

It also provides fascinating insights into the settlement of the Lutherans in South Australia, a piece of Australia’s colonialism I knew little about, including their encounters with the traditional owners of the land they took, the Peramangk people.

Devotion is a rich, immersive, often surprising novel, written with prosody that sings.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan Australia for the much appreciated ARC which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

I’m not sure I have the words to properly review this book. It’s not often I am brought to tears by a book but this… this was so achingly beautiful. It was mesmerising. Hannah Kent’s writing is so lyrical it is almost poetry. It is visceral and full of feeling and - I just don’t have the words.

Hanne (Johanne Nussbaum) is an almost 15 year old girl on the cusp of womanhood in a ‘old’ Lutheran community in 1836 in Prussia. The king has outlawed ‘old’ Lutheranism in an attempt to standardise the Protestant religions. A few of the communities are hoping to leave for the new world so they can worship as they wish and in peace. But Hanne is a child of nature, she has ways of seeing things and hearing the trees speak that is considered a little strange. She no real friends until she meets a kindred spirit Thea (Dorothea Eichenwald) from a family of newcomers and learns what it is to love. The two girls become inseparable.

Soon enough permission is granted for the villagers to leave Prussia and transport is arranged on a ship to South Australia. The journey is to take 6 months and it is a trial of endurance. The cramped quarters, the lack of ventilation, the smells of the night soil buckets, the smells of unwashed bodies, the smells of vomit from seasickness and the poor food all take their toll on the pilgrims and not all of them survive the voyage. Yet when Hanne is on the deck, the ship a lone speck in a vast ocean of blue, the wind in her hair, the breaching of whales and the whale song, the majesty of an albatross in flight she is at peace with the world and hears its songs.

The arrival in South Australia is also not quite what the pilgrims expected but one thing they are used to is hard work and they soon set about taming the land. Hanne finds a more vibrant song within the folds of this most ancient of lands and she revels in it. But, but there is tragedy too.

There’s not much more I want to say. It was a slow and quiet book that just oozed beauty. The settlement is based on the real life settlement of Hahndorf in the Barossa Valley by German people. And the voyage is based on a real voyage. I had previously read Kent’s book Burial Rites which was also totally amazing. She weaves a spell binding story with very real characters into a historical fiction book based on real events. And she does this in a totally awesome way. My only comment would be that I thought it was a little bit long in the second half so I am giving it 4.5 stars rounded down.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan Australia for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.

opens in a village in Prussia in 1836 where fellow members of the Old Lutheran church have collected together in order to worship secretly in a country where their religion has been banned. When they are given the opportunity to emigrate to Australia many of the families pack their meagre possessions and leave.

The ship they board is heavily overloaded and the cramped conditions in which they spend the next six months are described perfectly. The author has researched an actual voyage and delivers real facts in her usual beautiful prose. This section of the book is fascinating.

The story follows teenage Hanne and her close friend Thea and revolves around their relationship and love. During the course of the voyage they manage to spend a lot of time together but it is apparent even to them that their love does not have a future in their world. I began to wonder how the author was going to deal with this but she makes a very bold move which I did not see coming.

At this point the whole tone of the book changes and it will depend on each reader's personal preferences whether they enjoy it or not. Suffice it to say that there is a satisfying conclusion to this intriguing and memorable story

Devotion is the third novel by best-selling award-winning Australian author, Hannah Kent. Hanne Nussbaum is almost fifteen when the Eichenwald family join their Old Lutheran community in the Prussian village of Kay. Hanne is friendless, connecting better with the sky and the trees, the river and the stars, than people, her twin brother Matthias the only one who understands her even a bit.

“Even as a young child I had felt that girls forsook on whim and offered only inconstant friendship. Allegiances seemed to shift from day to day like sandbanks in a riverbed and, inevitably, I found myself run aground. Better to befriend a blanket of moss, the slip-quick of fish dart. Never was the love I poured into the river refused.”

But Anna Maria Eichenwald seems to see her, to understand her instantly. When Hanne encounters Anna Maria’s daughter, Thea for the first time in her beloved forest, there’s none of the scorn the other village girls aim at her. Instead, Thea offers acceptance and interest. They quickly become close, trying to be together at every opportunity.

Their community, having rejected the King’s union of the Protestant Churches, has to worship in secret; their pastor has fled, their church, bell removed, is locked by soldiers. The chance to leave, to emigrate to another land, a place where they will not be persecuted, is welcomed by the elders, but Hanne fears it will tear her from Thea: will the Eichenwalds join them?

After an emotional leave-taking, a tiring journey to the port and delays, some two hundred souls finally cram into a ship with eighty berths for a six-month journey to South Australia. Crowded together, with less than optimum nutrition and water from tainted barrels, illness inevitably strikes, and a reduced number arrives at their longed-for paradise, the place they will build, Heiligendorf, their joy tempered by grief.

Years later Hanne shares what she saw, heard, took part in: “I have described what has happened to me, and what I felt, and what I continue to feel. Gathered up and thrown on the wind to be wound on the air. To stir leaves and gutter candles and fill the sails of ships. I am unthreaded of it. I am the empty eye of the needle.”

Once again, Kent gives the reader a masterpiece, a tale of love and grief and steadfastness. She describes a community persecuted for their beliefs, but who, when free to follow those beliefs, display less tolerance than might be hoped. The depth of her research into so many aspects of the lives of such a community is apparent on every page. Emotions are expertly rendered.

Her prose is often exquisite, poetic: “The wings drew closer, beating against the sky. Rippling it. Cut the light with feathered knives” and “I had felt affirmation in my bones and blood and the wick of my soul had caught flame, had burned bright” and “And the birds, ever here, ever singing, a liturgy to govern the hours towards gods of cry and shriek and call. Kookaburra, magpie, shrike-thrush, wagtail. Currawong, crow, boobook. Scripture may no longer roll off my tongue in smooth certainty, but my mouth is still full of spirit. Holy Writ of living things, each one a prayer against the teeth” are examples.

Hanne’s description of aboriginal dance: “The Peramangk were the first people I ever saw dancing… The music was unlike anything I had heard before. It threaded itself under my skin until I felt sewn through with sound, and then it pulled me to its source… the beauty and urgency of their movement was everything I had imagined dancing might be, their bodies shaped and held by a music that was closer to the sound I heard coming from the earth than any hymn of my homeland.” This is an absolute pleasure to read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Australia.

The author seems to have a thing with young women living in a society with strict religious constraints, unrequited love and some sort of supernatural element.
In her third book she follows Hanne, a member of a persecuted Lutheran sect who emigrate to South Australia. The first half of the book covers life in Prussia, the pressure on the farming sect to adapt, their freedom to emigrate and details of a most unpleasant journey by ship. The descriptions of the life of the settlers onboard was one of the best I have read on their conditions and challenges to survive the weather, cramp conditions, poor food and rotten water they were given.
The second half lost me with a ghost now the narrator. Pity because the writing throughout was always descriptive and the emotions of the young women very realistic.

Fifteen year old Hanne lives with her parents and brother Matthias in a small village in Prussia in 1836. Their old Lutheran religion has been banned by the King in an attempt to unify the protestant churches, but they continue to worship in secret. Hanne is a girl who loves nothing better than being surrounded by nature, a plain looking girl with no real friends, she has trouble looking forward to the future of marriage and children that her community expects of all its young girls. However, when a new family moves to the village, Hanne is immediately drawn to their daughter Thea and a deep friendship and love develops between them.

In 1838, the Lutherans are given permission to emigrate to South Australia where they will be free to worship as they please. They embark on the long journey to Hamburg where they board a ship to take them to their new home. Their journey on board the Kristi is based on the real voyage of the Zebra (under the command of Captain Hahn who helped them buy land in the Barossa and for whom Hahndorf was named). With 199 people on board the ship and only 80 berths, the ship was horribly overcrowded and soon typhus became rampant, killing some on board. It’s at this point in the novel that the story takes an unexpected turn that will affect both Hanne and Thea’s future in the new colony.

I really enjoy historical fiction based on real events, especially when I learn something new and especially when the author has done their research as meticulously as Hannah Kent. Her descriptions of the hardships these people took in their journey are vividly recreated with a real sense of time and place, from the suppression of their religion in Prussia to their six-month nightmare journey in a cramped, airless ship to their indomitable spirit in building a new life from the ground up in a strange country on the other side of the world. Kent’s writing is always beautiful with a poetic feel to it, particularly when she is describing the natural world that Hanne connects with so readily. Hanne’s love for Thea is at the heart of the novel, but also her love for her family and her community. Overall, a powerful and moving novel that will continue to resonate with me for some time.

Hannah Kent's eagerly awaited third novel was a difficult one for me to rate. My reading experience, out of 5, was something like 4-6!-3-5, so now that I've sat with it for a few days I think a solid 4/5 is a good reflection of how I feel about it. It has everything I've come to know and love about Kent's storytelling, plus a little something extra and unexpected.

At face value, the story is irresistibly promising; a small Prussian village of Old Lutherans who have to practice their religion in secret, have the chance to settle in the emerging colony of South Australia, where they will be free to worship without fear of persecution. It delivers on that promise with a lengthy and difficult sea-voyage (based on the historic voyage of the Zebra in 1838), followed by the establishment of a new German-speaking settlement at Heiligendorf in the Adelaide Hills (inspired by the settlement of villages like Hahndorf in that area). Characterwise, we get a main family that includes twins, an outsider who joins the close-enough-to-closed community via marriage, and who inevitably attracts suspicion for her 'otherness', plus a few villagers who really struggle to accept change and difference, and make a bit of trouble. But the heart of the story belongs to two teenage girls who meet and form the most devoted of bonds - a bond that can withstand the greatest challenge imaginable.

The book is literally in 3 parts (Before, After, Now), as is the story (Prussia, Ship, South Australia), but they don't quite match up. That's as far as I'll go towards describing an event that sets this story apart. Just when we think Kent is doing what she has done before, and does very well, she introduces a daring new element. At first I was thrilled, then a little perplexed as I began to understand how this element would manifest, and finally I got it - I absolutely got it, and felt thankful that Kent was able to so cleverly bring together such a tender and touching end to the story.

I think established fans will not be disappointed, and it's likely Kent's fanbase will grow even larger to reward the risks that have been taken with this book.

Hannah Kent is quite possibly the most talented writer of our time. I’ve always loved Coleridge’s definition of prose being words in their best order, but poetry being the best words in their best order. Although Devotion appears to be prose, by this definition it is poetry. Kent has a way with words that is uniquely beautiful and soul-touching.

In 19th century Prussia, Hanne has never felt she fully belongs. A child of nature, attuned to beauty in a way her Old Lutheran community will never understand, 15 year old Hanne is not ready to become an adult, marry and have children. She meets Thea, a kindred spirit, and discovers love in various forms. The community migrates to Australia for religious freedom, but six months at sea will mean not everyone makes it to Adelaide alive and well.

This book is actually difficult for me to review as I loved the writing immensely, but aspects of the story did not work for me. The blurb made it quite clear that, as a consequence of something that happens at sea, Thea and Hanne will not be able to be together. I was of course unsurprised this would happen given the historical and religious context, but I did not expect the actual reason and the way the novel would deal with it. In fact, I was quite confused for a while in the second part of the book when I assumed I was reading about a fever dream, then realised I was not.

From a lesser writer, I might have stopped reading, but when Kent works magic with her words you are compelled to read on. This book is indeed an exquisite tragedy.

Great prose and a story different to her others. Still loved her first book the most but this is an enjoyable read. Thank you.

Devotion isn't the usual type of book I would read, however, I found the writing and the description of nature beautiful and will be reading more by Hannah Kent.