Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

One sentence synopsis... A literary whodunnit, set in a desolate Polish village, examining the line between sanity and madness, humans and animals. .

Read it if you like... deep readings of astrology, examining the poetry of William Blake, or truly strange, wacky ensembles of characters. .

Dream casting... Stellan Skarsgard as Oddball, a future older version of Renée Zellweger as Janina.

It simply wasn't my cup of tea. The author just wasn't concerned about the happenings in the book and was more focused on sharing her beliefs about a lot of things in general. I would say the reveal at the end was unexpected and good but if there was just no good lead up to conclusion. To me it was just it was a random reveal. One of the longest 250 pages i had read.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good book, BUT... I was not prepared for the endless meandering with the plot, in a very atmospheric setting. It took me 3 months to finish this quite short book because of it! The ending was not very satisfying to me, unless I chose to interpret the story as told by an unreliable narrator. Speaking of the narrator, really happy to see a woman in her 60s as a protagonist.

The writing however was a pleasure to read and I will look into more books by this author.

Taken from my mother's library. Do you ever find yourself reading a translation and feeling jealous of the folks who got to read it in its original language? Not to knock the translator, because the prose of this absolutely sings - I just suspect it's even more exquisite in Polish. I loved the magical realism, loved the embedded study of Blake and astrology, loved the narrator winding her way through town and the woods knowing few people are more invisible than an older woman.

So you know how sometimes a book is fine and you enjoy it well enough when you're reading it and could think of good things to say about it but it never actually hooks you? That's what this was, for me. It's narrated by Janina, an eccentric older woman living in a tiny Polish hamlet just over the border from the Czech Republic. Janina is a bit of a weirdo, working in her spare time to translate William Blake into Polish (from whence the title comes) and casting horoscopes as a serious practitioner of astrology. The story begins when she and a neighbor discover a man who lives near them dead, having choked on a bone during a meal. His is just the first death in a series that begins to strike in the local area, which passionate animal-rights advocate Janina attributes to revenge by animals against known hunters and poachers. It's not quite a murder mystery since I feel like that implies some level of investigation beyond searching a natal chart for signs that the victims would have violent encounters by animals, but the murders do provide the plot's forward momentum. Janina herself is a well-drawn character, and an unusual protagonist (an older lady, kind of kooky) in a way that feels refreshing. The prose is clever and engaging, but I think it's the style choice that defeated my attempts to get fully into it: like Blake, Tokarczuk uses capitalization in non-standard ways and it kept breaking up my ability to get into a flow with it even once I figured out it was a Blake reference. I really wish this had worked better for me but I'll definitely read her work again in the future!

“Oh yes, the human body is most definitely inhuman, especially a dead one.”

Maybe I'm not smart enough for literary fiction in some cases, but this just felt boring and tedious. Janina is an elderly Polish woman who loves her astrology and animals, and quickly becomes irritated with people who don't share her extremely inflexible morals where killing (for sport, for food, for necessity) is concerned. When neighbors and villagers start turning up dead under mysterious (and sometimes violent) circumstances, Janina thinks she has it all figured out, but nobody listens to the crazy hermit who lives out in the woods.

The book's written in a stream of consciousness style through Janina's eyes, so there's entire sections of the book that really don't relate to anything. She's a bit of an oddball, sends polite registered letters to the local cops asking them to check with their force's astrologer about the murders, and does other kooky old-person-cum-dorky-detective things you'd expect. Unfortunately the author does a great job of hammering home who the culprit is almost from the beginning, and even I was able to point to the right person around 15-20% in, so it's not really much of a mystery.

It also felt kind of preachy in some places, particularly when Janina goes off (mentally) about animal slaughter and environmental problems and such. I can't tell how much of that is character-driven and how much of that is author-driven, but it came off like a finger waggy school lesson in some places. These are all real issues, but a mystery novel feels like the wrong venue for trying to get your message across.

I don't know, I didn't connect much with this book. For a Nobel Prize winner, I expected something a bit more compelling. Instead I got a lot of dead air passages where I found myself mentally checking out until Janina (mentally) found the thread of where she was going plot-wise again. There's the bones (heh) of a good, dark story here, but I felt like they were buried under way too much meaningless meanderings and social commentary.

“It's hard work talking to some people, most often males. I have a Theory about it. With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts.”

Mrs. Duszejko is now one of my favorite characters. I love her so much and I feel like I'll be like her too in the same situation. I think it's so cool how her mind is still bright and active but her old woman body is how an old woman's body is (full of aches and ailments). She also goes on a tangent often like an old woman yet if she were younger then people will think oh how intellectual of her, or how original her thought process is. An old lady protagonist is so refreshing. The book showed how the world disregards old women, puts them in this category and that's all they are but they're not.

full time idiosyncratic, sometimes polemical, and sometimes humorous, ‘Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead' is more of a philosophical novel thinly veiled as a noir crime novel. The author maintains a whimsical narrative even while discussing the hypocrisy/double standards of society, ranging from cruelty against animals to the stigmatization of individuals with differing opinions or unconventional traits not deemed acceptable by “civilized” society.

While I found the book overall pleasing, in later parts, I felt that (especially Janina spilling beetle pheromones, which felt forced and foolish, seemingly to expedite the discovery of the killer), the progression appeared somewhat artificial.
Antonia Lloyd-Jones's translation is natural and fluid, making it delightful to read.
3.75/5

I thought this was delightful. A portrait of a small community of recluses living on a wind-swept Polish plateau. Our heroine is an elderly part-time teacher, and full time astrology junkie, who is regarded as a madwoman by the nearby community, because of her conspiracy theories and preference of animals over people. Then the parish is hit by a string of mysterious deaths...

The writing is exquisite, and I especially like how this book doesn't seem to fit any clear label.

I really struggled with this one. The author won the Nobel prize in literature and the Man Booker and this came highly recommended, but at no point was I able to really fall into the story. I had to go back and reread what felt like most of the book. I really wanted to like this one, the premise and writing were both very unique but overall I couldn't get into it. Still finished it to see if anything redeeming happened toward the end but ultimately wouldn't recommend.