Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Olga Tokarczuk
Set in a remote snowbound Polish village, this novel was a fitting read for the type of winter we’re having this year. The protagonist and narrator, Mrs. Duszejko, lives mostly in isolation. Most of the residents only spend their summers there, and she’s one of a handful of people who brave the cold over the winter.
The plot kicks off with her and her neighbour discovering the dead body of another neighbour, who had choked on a bone while eating. Soon, other villagers are found dead in increasingly bizarre circumstances. The book is sold as a crime/mystery novel, but it didn’t feel like that to me. Instead, the focus is on Mrs. Duszejko’s inner life.
I had a really hard time pinning down Mrs. Duszejko’s character, and I mean that as a compliment to the novel. She’s motivated mainly by her love for animals, which is something that I can get behind, but she expresses it by antagonizing the other townspeople, going on rants at the police station and accusing hunters of illegal poaching. She believes strongly in astrology; I tend to look down on pseudoscience, but her practice of it seems harmless, except for the fact that she pushes it on her friends.
On top of it all, I was left wondering if she suffers from mental illness. She has visions of her dead mother and grandmother, and most heartbreakingly, bursts into tears at random times, believing that it’s some sort of physical “ailment.” The narration (i.e. her internal monologue) descends into dark feelings that she’s useless or has no purpose.
I didn’t always enjoy my reading experience, as it’s sometimes meandering and slow. But in the end, I appreciated what the book was doing. It’s a portrait of a complicated person, whose sense of morality is in the right place, even if she doesn’t know what to do about it. You may not alway like her, but you can relate to her.
