Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead - [short] Book Review

To celebrate Women in Translation month, I decided to read Tokarczuk’s mystery novel Drive Your Plow. I have heard only great things about Tokarczuk’s prose and just had to give it a go. And I did like her prose, it was very well-written, but I cannot say the same for the plot of this novel. I was left rather disappointed with this one, constantly wondering if I was the only one who disliked this book.

First, let’s discuss the good aspects of the novel. The narrator of the story is an aging lady named Janina Duszejko, whose last name is often mistaken. I believe Tokarczuk did this wonderfully because as one ages, it seems as though one’s identity isn’t relevant, anything they have to say is suddenly unimportant. As an older person of the community, your voice is silenced due to your outdated, unfashionable views. Additionally, I admired Mrs. Duszejko’s devotion towards animals and poetry. Her working hard to translate Blake’s poetry into Polish with her friend and pupil Dizzy is just refreshing to read in a book since I am a big Blake fan myself.

Now, for the negative elements of the book: I truly, truly detest Astrology. It’s a personal ick for me. The narrator of the book is a big fan of Astrology and talks about it in length throughout the book. I often dozed out on those moments and couldn’t care less who possessed the quality of Saturn or Pluto on which day and what time. Perhaps for that reason I found distancing myself from the narrator. I wonder if Tokarczuk did that on purpose so we are blinded by what is really going on.

In addition, I loved the writing, I loved the prose because it was something unique, however the story, the mystery was poorly written. It is evident who the murderer is in the story, but the reveal towards the end felt so flat. And the whole detail of how the murders were committed in the second last chapter felt wholly unnecessary to me because it was evident from the start. We are provided with clues through the story, so we can pick it up. It isn’t important then to know what went behind the scenes.

I was interested in reading this book because a Goodreads review compared it with Crime and Punishment, which I believe is a crime in of itself. The reviewer claimed it asked the same questions Dostoevsky posed in his brilliant novel, that is who deserves to live and who deserves to kill. However, upon my completion of this novel, I was left with the opposite questions: who has the right to judge and who decides which judgment is right. Additionally, Dostoevsky’s novel is considered brilliant because we know who the killer is, we are forced to look into his psyche, but Tokarczuk fails her readers in that case. While we know who the killer is, we are just forced to play along with the character.

My disappointment for this novel is evident from this review. I wondered to myself if I’d read this at the wrong time, but I believe I would’ve come to this conclusion again regardless. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone unless you’d like to form your opinion on what is right and what is wrong.