TW: This book contains the graphic depiction of a rape.

The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea is billed a Gothic mystery set in 1686 in Iceland that has shades of Jane Eyre to it. It’s about the dangers of rumors, and how they can poison a community. It’s wonderfully atmospheric and creepy…at least at first. About two-thirds of the way through the book, The Glass Woman shifts from a traditional Gothic to something more like historical fiction, and I found that once all the mysteries were revealed, I was no longer as engaged in the story.

The book opens with a body being dragged out of the sea ice, and it sets the atmosphere for the rest of the novel:

The other two men hold him as he starts to heave the body from out of the water. Slowly, a dark shape emerges and flops out onto the ice.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps.

They carry the heavy parcel over the sea-ice, back to land.

He tries not to look down at where the dead hand trails across the slush and ice, like the fingers of a child, balling snow and ready to hurl. Smoke from the fires in the nearby crofts sends a black scrawl into the icy air–dark runic scribbles against the villagers’ excited white breath.

As the men near the shore, the people surge forward, fluttering like eager carrion birds, jostling to be the first to gorge on this unexpected feast.

We cut to the main character, Rósa, struggling to make the right decision for her family. Her father has died, leaving her and her mother dependent on charity to survive. Rósa has no desire to marry, but a traveler from another settlement, Jón Eiríksson, who was immediately smitten with her while passing through on a trading journey. He proposed, and Rósa can’t afford to overlook his proposal; Jón is a wealthy man and marriage to him will mean that she will be secure and can send supplies and money back to her sick mother.

Jón is an imposing and cold man, and he makes Rósa uncomfortable. He likes that she is a devout woman (she can read the Bible, unusual for a woman of the time) and frequently remarks that he thinks she’ll be an obedient wife. When Rósa moves to Stykkishólmur after her marriage, she finds that their croft is set apart from the village. Jón tells her he doesn’t want her to leave the croft or interact with the other villagers, isolating Rósa from all other human contact.

Despite being left largely alone to tend to her new home, Rósa becomes aware of the rumors that Jón killed his first wife, Anna. Anna died of a fever (according to Jón) and he buried her at night with no witnesses. People are suspicious of him, his isolation, and the way he treated his wife’s death. The few times Rósa does approach other women in the settlement they warn her not to upset Jón, and otherwise avoid contact with her.

The croft where they live also contains a loft, not something that is common, and Jón keeps it locked. He forbids Rósa from ever looking inside and gets angry when she questions him about the loft or Anna.

Jón leaves Rósa alone for much of the time. He stays late in the fields tending to their livestock, often sleeping in the barn, or sleeps on his boat at night when he is fishing. He is always with his friend and manservant Pétur. There is gossip about Pétur too, who was found abandoned as a child and nearly feral. People seem to believe he is a kind of changeling or part demon.

At night when Jón and Pétur are gone, Rósa lays in bed and swears she can hear scratching noises from the loft. At times she feels as if Anna’s ghost is in the house. Alone in an unfamiliar place, isolated from company, and aware that her husband is under the suspicious gaze of the villagers, Rósa begins to fear she is going mad.

All of this is 100% Elyse catnip. I love stories that are creepy with bleak atmospheres and supernatural occurrences. My issue with the book, as I said earlier, is that it starts off with all this Gothic fabulousness, but then shifts to something else that was less satisfying.

We learn the truth about what happened to Anna about two-thirds of the way through the book. With the primary mystery solved, the book morphs into something more like historical fiction with a lot of action and peril. I’m not opposed to that as a genre, but that wasn’t the book I thought I signed up for. I was completely invested in three questions: what happened to Anna? What or who was in the loft? Was Jón a killer? Once those three questions were answered, I felt like I had my closure the rest of the book dragged for me.

Another thing that irked me a little was that Rósa never really picks up on the fact that Jón and Pétur are lovers, despite it being pretty apparent. There are lots of rumors around the village regarding their homosexuality, to the point where it’s almost an open secret. When we get snippets of the past, we learn that Anna was aware of their relationship, too. . Jón only has sex with Rósa when she questions why they haven’t consuumated their marriage and only rarely after that. He has to get drunk before he’s willing to have to intercourse with her. I wasn’t sure why Rósa would be naive to Jón’s sexuality considering no one else was.
There is a theme about how rumors can spiral out of control, especially in communities that are isolated and rely heavily on each other. I thought that focusing more on that could have amplified the horror element to this novel, but not much time is spent exploring it.

I appreciated the atmosphere and the unique setting to The Glass Woman, but resolution to the main plot came too quickly leaving a good chunk of narrative to just sort of drag along. That plus the treatment of Jón’s homosexulity made this book at best a “meh” for me.