Kent conjures up with exceptional intensity and empathy a world in which folk beliefs hold as much sway over people’s minds as religious faith . . . It would have been all too easy to present this story as a conflict between rational enlightenment and peasant superstition, but the main strength of Kent’s narrative is that it avoids such a simple dichotomy. ‘I have told you my truth,’ Nance tells the court during the trial scenes that provide the book’s climax. Such is the power of Kent’s imaginative sympathy with her characters that this becomes not merely the mantra of a deluded old woman, but a moving statement of her continuing faith in her own vision of the way the world works . . . The Good People is an even better novel than Burial Rites — a starkly realised tale of love, grief and misconceived beliefs

Lyrical and unsettling, The Good People is a vivid account of the contradictions of life in rural Ireland in the 19th century. A literary novel with the pace and tension of a thriller, Hannah Kent takes us on a frightening journey towards an unspeakable tragedy. I am in awe of Kent’s gifts as a storyteller.

The Good People is, like Burial Rites, a thoroughly engrossing entrée into the macabre nature of a vanished society, its virtues and its follies and its lethal impulses. The Good People takes us straight to a place utterly unexpected and believable, where amidst the earnest mayhem people impose on each other, there is no patronizing quaintness, but a compelling sense of the inevitability of solemn horrors

Beautiful . . . the setting and the characters drew me in immediately and kept me completely absorbed

The Good People is a novel about how competing systems of thought – religious, medical, folkloric and, eventually, legal – attempt to make sense of the bad stuff that happens. Significantly, the novel is set in a valley, a place cut off from the outside world. The community – and the novel – feels claustrophobic. The characters are trapped in their crucible of mutterings and gossip by a combination of geography, ancestry and poverty. It is to Kent’s credit that she never passes judgment on her protagonists’ beliefs, even as they lead them to ever more extreme, even insane, behaviour . . . Kent has a terrific feel for the language of her setting. The prose is richly textured with evocative vocabulary – skib, spancel, creepie stool . . . the overall result is to transport the reader deep into the rural Irish hinterlands. This is a serious and compelling novel about how those in desperate circumstances cling to ritual as a bulwark against their own powerlessness

Hannah Kent’s second novel is a thorough study of the faiths and rituals of a rural community, as well as a poignant portrayal of grief

The Good People transports us to Co Kerry, west Ireland, in 1826 . . . Kent doesn’t just show us rural Ireland; she lets us smell it, touch it and feel it too, from the heat of the turf fires to the sharp, bitter smell of a woman, fresh in from the rain . . . The Good People lies somewhere between Andrew Michael Hurley’s gothic The Loney and Emma Donoghue’s latest novel, The Wonder . . . an absorbing and imaginative novel about superstition and the old ways

Kent’s immersion and passion for her subject is evident – even the cadence of the characters’ speech in the novel is exact and authentic

An imaginative tour-de-force that recreates a way of perceiving the world with extraordinary vividness . . . With its exquisite prose, this harrowing, haunting narrative of love and suffering is sure to be a prize-winner

Hannah Kent has terrific form as a historical novelist – her highly acclaimed debut, Burial Rites, set in a 19th-century Icelandic village, was shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. This novel, based on a true story, is even better. As the tale slowly builds, Kent creates an immersive, startlingly lyrical portrait of a time when the borders between logic and superstition were dangerously porous and where the Catholic church is determined to strengthen its grip . . . thrillingly alive to the dynamic of poor, close-knit communities, where fear of the outsider trumps reason and compassion

Remarkable . . . Kent displays an uncanny ability to immerse herself in an unfamiliar landscape and to give that landscape a life – a voice – that is utterly convincing . . . a haunting novel, shrewdly conceived and beautifully written

A sensitively drawn tale of love, grief, and terrible loss

The Good People is a sensitively drawn tale of love, grief, and terrible loss, set in a tiny Irish village in the early 19th century . . . filled with descriptions of ritual and rhythm

Atmospheric

This disturbing tale of superstition is full of emotion

The Good People is an even better novel than Burial Rites – a starkly realised tale of love, grief and misconcieved beliefs

Beautifully written . . . gripping

Gripping and compelling

This novel is about love and its limitations

Kent has a wonderful talent for taking fragments of historical facts and breathing life into them through her fiction. She has matched her debut with another disturbing and haunting novel

Hauntingly poetic and evocative

An intricate, heartbreaking portrayal of three women and the conflict between religious belief and folklore