Though the book functions perfectly as noir crime – moving towards a denouement that, for sleight of hand and shock, should draw admiration from the most seasoned Christie devotee – its chief preoccupation is with unanswerable questions of free will versus determinism, and with existential unease. a mere whodunit would hardly satisfy a novelist who said 'just writing a book to know who is the killer is wasting paper and time,' and so it is also a primer on the politics of vegetarianism, a dark feminist comedy, an existentialist fable and a paean to William Blake.

Read Full Review >ĭrive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead-.arriving in a deft and sensitive English translation-provides an extraordinary display of the qualities that have made Tokarczuk so notable a presence in contemporary literature. Secrets that, if you’ve kept your ear to the ground, you knew in your bones all along. This book is not a mere whodunit: It’s a philosophical fairy tale about life and death that’s been trying to spill its secrets. Like an insurance policy against skimming. Tokarczuk successfully aligns these pages with the book’s broader themes, but one can feel that argument being made. Lyrical as they are, they could be airlifted out of the novel without causing any structural damage. Only the extended passages on astrology threaten to derail the reader. If Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft, was built for ambience, Lloyd-Jones’s translation of Drive Your Plow was built for speed. They are more like little cuts - quick, exacting and purposefully belated in their bleeding. But even as Tokarczuk sticks landing after landing, her asides are never desultory or a liability.

Authors with Tokarczuk’s vending machine of phrasing and gimlet eye for human behavior (her tone is reminiscent of Rachel Cusk, with an added penchant for comedy) are rarely also masters of pacing and suspense. Tokarczuk is a vocal feminist writer and it’s no accident that the more Duszejko’s sanity is called into question, the more relatable her plight becomes.

Drive your plow over