Reviews

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

defensebread's review

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

nietlauramaarmaura's review against another edition

5.0

Actually cried at the end, love love love this book

sidharthvardhan's review against another edition

3.0

*winner of Nobel prize*

There can be spoilers in here for it is supposed to be a whodunit, though the whodunit is so painfully that calling it a whodunit seems to be a crime against humanity.

This book employs a theme that is close to me and seems to be explored more and more often by writers worldwide - that of cruelty towards animals and how it has become ingrained in our lifestyle and how little a thought we spare to it. ‘Black Beauty’ is the first novel I remember that explores this theme and you could see it reflected in a lot of works of Coetzee (specifically ‘Elizabeth Costello’) and most recently Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’ (Elizabeth Costello looks at it in more logical way, while The Vegetarian is all pathos). Much of what haunts these authors can be summed up in a single quote from Theodor W. Adorno "Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.'" (BTW a much similar comparison attracted a lot of criticism for Elizabeth Costello).

You could be critical of such sentimentality toward animals after all as Costello points out even the animal lovers are all about wildlife - the tigers, polar bears etc and even on off chance you are vegetarian because you don't like the idea of animals dying to be on your dining table, you would still take millions of lives by doing pest control at your home (that is an argument from Elizabeth Costello).

In some African tribes, they pray for the animal they have just killed to eat - we can’t exist without violence but at least they spare a thought for their victims.

Anyway, people do show such kind of compassion for animals. And to some, their pets are really like their children. And if someone kills the pet you raised like your child, won’t you be moved to seek justice? But in this case, the courts won’t care for you. So then vengeance? That is the case with the narrator here.

From very early on, you can see the narrator, an elderly lady who lives alone and watches weather forecast all day is no reliable source of information, She talks about horoscopes a lot and that is one of her many eccentricities, I mean look at her attitude toward names:

“I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t like it. Those names didn’t suit this Dog, considering her personal history. Something else would have to be thought up for her instead.
What a lack of imagination it is to have official first names and surnames. No one ever remembers them, they’re so divorced from the Person, and so banal that they don’t remind us of them at all. What’s more, each generation has its own trends, and suddenly everyone’s called Magdalena, Patryk or – God forbid – Janina. That’s why I try my best never to use first names and surnames, but prefer epithets that come to mind of their own accord the first time I see a Person. I’m sure this is the right way to use language, rather than tossing about words stripped of all meaning.”

and she is not the only eccentric character in there. About her neighbor:

“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 a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains. His capacity to read novels almost entirely vanishes; testosterone autism disturbs the character’s psychological understanding.”

And her theory of genetics:

“I was working in my garden patch, testing one of my Theories. I think I can find proof for the fact that we inherit phenotypes, which flies in the face of modern genetics. I had noticed that certain acquired features make irregular appearances in subsequent generations. So three years ago I set about repeating Mendel’s experiment with sweet peas; I am now in the middle of it. I notched the petals of the flowers, through five generations in a row (two a year), and then checked to see if the seeds would produce flowers with damaged petals. I must say that the results of this experiment were looking very encouraging.”

But despite everything, the novel just never catches the spark. To be honest, she seemed to be making it on-the-go, as if it was serialized in some magazine or created for an on-the-spot contest and, though it was not long, it felt long.

The little that is good shows in observations about humanity made by the narrator.

fondoffiction's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No

4.0

ahoots17's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

maggievictory's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

This is my favorite book of the year so far. It's so different from anything else I've read and the narrator for the audiobook took a brilliant story and made it even more special.

zingrid21's review against another edition

mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

best_rat's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Albeit an atmospheric read, fares as shittily as a flockful of bird droppings as a crime novel, and unfortunately, that was the intended purpose of my reading. But even more problematic than that is the constantly antagonizing, preachy tone adopted throughout the narrative and the main character's deranged psyche left completely uncharted.

As a transparent mystery, the plot is granted autheticity only through inexplicable idolatry of a set of degenerate esoteric interests. The inner monologue of the main character is filled to the brim with cognitive biases remained unresolved and unsorted, and although blaming her surroundings of vile hypocrisy, we see in her vicious lashout against animal cruelty (the bane of her worries) the reductionary quality of other kinds of cruelty against the living. When confronted with violence, responding with violence to demonstrate your disapproval is neither revolutionary nor logically consistent. It is also pretty much useless (which is a valid point if what you're aiming for is long-standing justice), and only causes more destruction. It is, more importantly, a petty move that makes nill of a perfectly sound cause and does it, moreover, even injustice. The revenge plot may move you emotionally, yet it virtually changes nothing in the system opposed to. One still ends up being stuck in one's ivory tower. The protagonist at some point early on also seems to be acknowledging this fact. "My efforts are insignificant" is declared, in a morbid passage on the ephemeral condition of human existence, one of the few parts of the text that truly got me thinking. Unfortunately, the grief-stricken, eccentric mind of an ethically charged murderer is somehow managed to be left alone in a sort of lazy man's first-person narrative, with minimal disruption in the form of occasional nightmares. While executing the very act of cruelty that has shaken her to the core in "Anger", she remains desentisized, unperturbed, and even proud and full of self-righteousness. Almost the very image of hypocrisy and the "insignia of power" she shed tears in opposition to, yet no more. Because they killed, so you kill. So, all is well, you think. Another pure sensibility doomed to corruption through human ill conduct, the source thereof remaining indisputable. Only one layer of this two-fold tragedy is observed by the author, however.

Imagine all the fun duality that left unexplored. For shame, surely not what Raskolnikov should've taught you! At the end of the day, this reader was simply disappointed by the lack of self-directed questioning in a novel seemingly contemplative, whose criminal elements were chronically of secondary importance to begin with. Guess we're just out to hunt down the bullies in an attempt to lick our wounds for this one. But what is lost remains lost all the same. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Murder, and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Sexism and Mental illness

Minor: Gaslighting, Religious bigotry, and Drug abuse

cynthiareads's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I really struggled to finish this one.  I didn't really care about any of the characters and figured out very early who the killer was.  

tedmarriott's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25