Issue #32: Book Review - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

I last penned a book review on May 1, 2022, when I reviewed Anuk Arudpragasam’s Booker Prize-longlisted book. I have since read about 52 books, many of them with compelling plots, characters I root for and others that drive me up the wall, and most importantly, for me, prose that elevates the soul and leaves me with much to ponder upon. Notable mentions are Chester Himes’s’ If He Hollers Let Him Go, Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Nadifa Mohamed’s The Orchard of Lost Souls, Z.Z. Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom, Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Small Worlds, and Colson Whiteheads’s The Nickle Boys.

Two days ago, I finished Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Olga is a Novel Prize winner for Literature, so I was rather keen to read her books. Like all good books, Drive Your Plow has a clear plot, characters one can empathise with even when one doesn’t fully agree with their beliefs or politics, and generally, writing that excites. I was compelled to write a review, so please enjoy it.

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Narrative

First-person

Summary

We meet Mrs. Duszekjo, an old, eccentric lady who lives in a remote Polish village near the Czech border. She’s obsessed with Astrology and Animals, and William Blake’s poems, one of which the beautiful title of the book is taken from. Our narrator believes animal life is as valuable as human life and should be protected. Who decides who/what is to be protected or killed? Who decides what’s useful or not?

She gets indignant when members of the local hunting club kill for sport, and she confronts them a few times. When members of the club start getting murdered, our narrator gets caught in a thrilling murder investigation.

What I Liked

The narrator’s observations about the workings of the world, the nature of Man, and her thoughts on how Humans and Animals ought to interact were quite interesting to read.

You’ll notice that I capitalised some improper nouns in my previous paragraphs. That’s a defining characteristic of the writing in the book. Improper nouns were liberally capitalised, and the effect was the elevation of what are ordinarily plain words. Those words, to me, were imbued with life, and they jumped off the page at me.

I liked how thought provoking the book is, the many questions it raises about life, animal ethics, and the nature of good and evil.

Delightful writing!

What I Didn’t Quite Like

I have stated once too many times that I consider Astrology to be a pseudoscience. I try not to judge those who swear by it, but I must confess that it takes serious effort not to scoff at it. Venus is in the fourth house. Mercury is in retrograde. What does any of that mean?!

Anyway, the narrator, being endearing, made me interested enough to pay attention to her obsession with explaining every event with star placements, but it got a bit too much and boring at some point. I wish the author didn’t dedicate as many pages to the topic as she did. The book would have gotten a five-star rating from me had it not been for that.

Quotations

Within our bodies, disintegration inexorably advances; soon, we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. […] Everything will sink into darkness and vanish
Sometimes, it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves, and then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other
The human psyche evolved in order to defend us against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. […] it makes sure we’ll never understand what’s going on around us […] for it would be impossible to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made up of suffering
What’s the difference between a hunter and a poacher, anyway?

PS: If you are wondering where I have been, I have been juggling trying to build a product, read books, and be a decent friend, all while trying to stay healthy physically and mentally. If you thought all of that isn’t easy, then you’re right. Anyway, I have taken time off Twitter, which is a time sink for me, and I have realised it is a toxic environment for me and, in my discussions with friends, a toxic space for most, too. Unless you take regular breaks away from there, think deeply about how you use it, and how you have conversations on there, it’s hard to realise how much the toxicity seeps into you. I hope you’re keeping healthy.