Book Review: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

From Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk (Author), Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator):

Amazon

"The door into the kitchen was ajar, and at once I saw Big Foot’s body lying on the floor. Almost as soon as my gaze landed on him, it leaped away. It was a while before I could look over there again. It was a dreadful sight."

Grade: A-

---

Book Review: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I try not to know too much about a book before I read it. Something about avoiding spoilers. But it's rare that I don't even know what genre a novel is before I choose it. But that's the case with "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead." I chose it for one reason, and one reason only. I learned that its author, Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, had won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018. Seeking to rectify a gap in my learning, I chose "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead." I'm glad I did.

Before reading it, I didn't know if this novel was historical fiction, a mystery, a thriller, or what. Even after reading it, I wasn't sure how I'd describe it. The Richardson Public Library's synopsis describes it as "Suspense fiction" and "a thriller cum fairy tale." In hindsight, that's probably as good a description as any. It's also a character study. It's set on Poland's border with the Czech Republic, and on the border of reality and insanity.

An old woman (not so old, really), Janina Duszejko, who lives alone, studies astrology, translates William Blake, and is welcoming to only a few neighbors, finds the body of one of those neighbors, a man nicknamed Big Foot, dead from choking on a deer bone. The old woman, who narrates the story, immediately suspects the deer. "He choked on a bone from a Deer he’d poached. Vengeance from beyond the grave." And so begins a mystery that doesn't end until a few more bodies are found, and a few more animals—foxes, dogs, and beetles among them—play a role in the story.

The author won the Nobel Prize in Literature, deservedly so for writing like this scene-setting: "Here the sky hangs over us dark and low, like a dirty screen, on which the clouds are fighting fierce battles. That’s what our houses are for—to protect us from the sky, otherwise it would pervade the very inside of our bodies, where, like a little ball of glass, our Soul is sitting. If such a thing exists."

The mystery gets neatly resolved, but it's the cast of characters who are the best part of this novel. Characters like the deceased Big Foot, a hunter; Oddball, a neighbor; Boros the entomologist; Dizzy, who translates Blake with Janina (a name she despises); and especially Janina Duszejko herself, the narrator who will likely prove to be one of fiction's most memorable characters. For much of the book the mystery takes a back seat to fleshing out Janina Duszejko. In fact, halfway through the novel, I probably wouldn't have described it as a mystery at all, but, spoiler alert, that's exactly what it turns out to be. A fine one at that.

---

"Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" is available from the Richardson Public Library. :-)