drive your bones over the plow of the dead

As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit.

Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work.' -Annie Proulx Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. I look forward to reading more of Olga Tokarczuk’s writing, hopefully translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, whose work here is outstanding.'A brilliant literary murder mystery.' - Chicago Tribune Like Drive Your Plow, this earthy thriller full of cosmic thinking, she is unforgettable. She’s peaceable and belligerent in equal measure, pitiable and frightening at the same time. It’s a rare protagonist who contains so many eccentric, often contradictory notions, but Janina is somehow totally believable. She holds a wide range of pet theories (‘Theory’ is also always capitalised), leading to many brilliant digressions: on the ‘testosterone autism’ of middle-aged men, on how weather reports offer a useful typology of all people, on overused expressions, on ‘Lazy Venus syndrome’, on the beautiful art of translation (her buddy Dizzy whiles away hours crafting Polish versions of William Blake), on the power of Anger. It’s a clue to her intense respect for the natural world. All animals she encounters have their nouns capitalised, and some are granted names (as with Consul, the fox that criss-crosses the Czech border). She rejects most given names for people, preferring labels that sum up her immediate impression of their character or physicality – hence Bigfoot, Oddball, Good News, The Grey Lady, and more. The early chapters signal Janina’s singular perspective on the world. She’s among the very few who can tolerate the dreadful winters there, and among of the first on the scene when a neighbour turns up dead one snow-laden night. Meet Janina Duszejko, semi-retired school teacher and amateur astrologer, who leads a quiet life on a tough plateau in rural Poland.

Though it’s a fine multiple-murder mystery, it’s the narrator who makes Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead such a compelling read.

Drive your bones over the plow of the dead