Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

“With Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Man Booker International Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel. In a remote Polish village, Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. She is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; she's unconventional, believing in the stars; and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, Duszejko becomes involved in the investigation. By no means a conventional crime story, this existential thriller by 'one of Europe's major humanist writers' (Guardian) offers thought-provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice against marginalized people, animal rights, the hypocrisy of traditional religion, belief in predestination – and caused a genuine political uproar in Tokarczuk's native Poland.”

Note: I read the French translation of the novel. Cliquez ici pour lire mon avis de lecture en français

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a novel from the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel Laureate for literature in 2018. The plot focuses on Janina, an old woman who lives alone in the countryside of Poland, not far away from the border with Czechia. She happens to find her neighbour dead, and she helps the police with their investigation. During the course of the novel, there are several similar deaths, and a point connecting all the victims was their passion for hunting.

I liked the fact that the story was taking place in contemporary Poland. The novel was published in 2010 and I believe the story definitely takes place after 2004, as there are several references to Poland already being part of the European Union, including references to the European law on forests. The main character Janinais also interesting with several contradictions, such as how she is not religious but at the same time, she is obsessed with astrology, and also has an interest in the poems of William Blake.

Janina as the narrator is also the novel’s weakness. Given that this is an investigation on murders, information given to the readers during the course of the novel is interesting. However, Janina is an unreliable narrator and often changes what she had said earlier and even admits to having lied to the reader in the past. Considering the way this novel went, I would classify it as dull mystery which hardly motivated me to turn pages to find out what had happened next. The end may be a surprise to some readers but I must say that to me personally, it was no “big reveal”, it was obvious from the very beginning.

There was also some difficulty in following any character other than Janina, given how she had the habit of using nicknames for everyone and at times, their real names are used and at other times, their nicknames are used and it took me a while to realise that the two were in fact, the same person.

To conclude it is a mystery novel with an interesting narrator, though, a narrator unsuitable for being in this kind of a novel. I did not enjoy reading this book and on that note, I award this book a rating of four on ten.

Rating – 4/10

Have a nice day,
Anirudh