Musings of a reading addict

Keywords: Murder Mystery, Animal Rights, Activism

Genre: Murder Mystery

Length: short medium long

Country: Poland

Synopsis

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. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .

Review

I just finished Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, and honestly, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was definitely not this.

Just so you understand where I’m coming from, Olga Tokarczuk, in my mind, has always occupied this space of being a dense author. Not necessarily difficult, but the kind of author you approach after doing some homework. Someone whose books require context, research, and a certain amount of preparation before diving in. I can’t even tell you exactly where I got this impression from, but I suspect it has something to do with the Nobel Prize, with the enormous praise surrounding The Books of Jacob, and even with the titles she chooses. I mean, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a title borrowed from William Blake. It’s beautiful, it’s evocative, it’s profound. Naturally, I expected a book that would be equally profound.

(For me) It wasn’t.

For some context, I’m currently reading The Books of Jacob. I’m only about 15% into it, but as you may know, I’m a teacher, it’s the middle of June, the school year is wrapping up, I’m buried under paperwork, the children are throwing tantrums, I have no patience, they have no patience, and The Books of Jacob is not exactly the ideal companion for this particular season of life. So I decided to take a break and pick up a shorter Tokarczuk novel instead. Same author, lighter commitment, keep the reading momentum going.

So I picked up Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

The beginning completely caught me off guard because I had absolutely no idea this was a murder mystery. Suddenly it’s nighttime, there are strange noises, an elderly woman is woken up, she goes outside, there’s a dead body, and people have names like Big Foot and Oddball. It was all very different from what I had expected.

Still, I kept reading. Naturally, I also finished it. And after finishing it, I honestly don’t know what to say.

I can’t say I disliked it. At the same time, I can’t say I was particularly impressed by it either.

The story felt like one I’ve encountered many times before, just dressed in slightly different clothes. Yes, there are important themes. Yes, there are relevant discussions about animal rights, about the way humans relate to nature, about who gets dismissed by society and why. But when I step back and look at the book as a whole, I don’t feel like it gave me anything fundamentally new.

On characters

Our narrator is an elderly woman who used to be an engineer and a teacher and now looks after homes during the off-season. She loves animals. Her two dogs have disappeared and she mourns them deeply. She calls them “my dears.” She passionately advocates for animal rights and openly despises hunters. At the same time, she is obsessed with astrology and spends a considerable amount of time calculating horoscopes, analyzing birth charts, and determining people’s dates of death.

And this is where I ran into my biggest problem.

I know the novel intentionally presents her as someone whom others consider eccentric, unstable, or even ridiculous. But for me, it was very difficult to empathize with her. I don’t find the “hysterical old woman” archetype particularly amusing, intriguing, or sympathetic. I mostly found it annoying.

Maybe this makes me sound old-fashioned, but I tend to think that reaching a certain age should come with at least some awareness of how people work. Yes, I understand not caring what others think anymore. But if every concern is expressed through shouting, provoking, and alienating everyone around you, people are not going to listen more carefully. They’re going to dismiss you entirely.

And for a character who is repeatedly portrayed as intelligent, educated, cultured, and intellectually curious, this contradiction never really clicked for me.

On the mystery

As for the mystery itself, I think it was perfectly competent. I suspected the culprit relatively early on, and when my suspicions were confirmed, there was still some satisfaction in seeing that I had been right. But beyond that, it never really surprised me. It never delivered that punch that makes me immediately understand why a particular mystery stands out from dozens of others.

Now, you could absolutely argue that this is partly my fault.

I’ve read a lot of murder mysteries over the years. It’s possible I’ve simply become harder to impress. It’s also possible that I walked into this book carrying expectations that were unfairly high. I can accept both criticisms.

So if you think I’ve misunderstood this novel, feel free to tell me. I’m always interested in hearing different perspectives.

But as things stand right now, I can’t say I would particularly recommend Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead… unless you haven’t read many murder mysteries or unless you’re already deeply invested in Tokarczuk’s work oooor unless you love the genre so much that the idea of having read one murder mystery too many simply does not exist in your universe.

If that’s the case, then by all means, give it a try.

For me, though, this one was interesting, competent, occasionally thought-provoking, and ultimately far less profound than I had been led to expect.