Hanne is a teenaged girl from a devout Lutheran family in 19th century Prussia. Her father is a fairly strict elder, her mother is beautiful and loving, but she’s undemonstrative – not a cuddly, hugging sort of mother. Hanne is tall and coltish, with long legs that occasionally stumble. Ditto Lonnie and James. Which is weird, because the book spends most of its time obsessing over Lonnie, but it's more about what she has and how she behaves. There's no history for any of the characters which makes them pretty bland.

Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences". www.oscars.org . Retrieved January 24, 2023.You’re not, then?’ She continued walking until she was standing an arm’s length away. I could see that her eyelashes were translucent, surrounding eyes that were deeply blue. Fathomless blue, winter’s blue. Hannah co-founded the Australian literary publication Kill Your Darlings, and is a Patron for World Vision Australia. She has written for The New York Times, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Qantas Magazine and LitHub. The novel also skims over its racial politics. Kent’s writing was informed by conversations with Peramangk and Ngarrindjeri elder Mandy Brown; and at a recent event, she highlighted the complexities of setting any story in this period without “privileging the perspective of the oppressors”. The “creative risk” she takes in Devotion is in part, she said, a way to get round this. But the supernatural route (no further spoilers) feels to me like an abnegation of the bigger risk – that of engaging more closely with the politics of either of the peoples she has chosen to portray. She touches on their encounters so fleetingly that it feels more like due diligence, cushioning the novel’s principal, romantic theme. Against the silence of the forest, her footsteps upon the twigs and needles sounded impossibly loud.

Playing Brown and Hudner are two of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood, Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell.The writing is exceptional. Here is one descriptions of how Hanne feels when she is at one with a tree or a plant.