Sarah's Library

Possible, probable spoilers (I'm not sure as I haven't written them yet) throughout.

19/3 - Interesting, disturbing, and slightly distressing, and a true story. When Agnes thinks about how many days she has left I relate that to my own contemplation of how many days I have left before my surgery, so while it's not quite the same I do feel like I can empathise with Agnes' situation (although her situation's slightly worse than mine as she's contemplating getting her head chopped off with an axe - like I said, disturbing). To be continued...

28/3 - A haunting tale in which I saw many parallels between Agnes' situation and my own, too many to truthfully say I enjoyed the story. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more if I didn't have the weight of major surgery and the possible revelation of cancer hanging over my head. With that said the three stars I've given the book is me, not the book. It was a very good book, I just didn't, couldn't enjoy it to the full.

The summary says this is the story of the last execution in Iceland, I would have been interested to read about why this was the last one. Did they simply go a number of decades, perhaps a century without a crime serious enough to warrant the death penalty, and then sometime in the last hundred years decide that the death penalty was barbaric and inhumane and no longer a penalty they wanted to give? I wish Kent had included that information in the author's notes. I think I'll go Wikipedia it now.