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

Hunters are for killing

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was first published in 2009. It was published in English in 2018, shortly after Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The title is a quote from William Blake, a favorite author of two of the characters in the novel. In between buying this book and reading it, I made the mistake of watching a Polish movie called Spoor, which, unbeknownst to me until the closing credits, is an adaptation of this novel. So before I even started reading the book, I knew the ending and all of the secrets behind its murder mysteries. Nevertheless, I enjoy Tokarczuk’s writing and can certainly recognize that this is a worthwhile work of literature, despite the spoilers. The book is far superior to the movie and does a better job of pacing and parceling out its reveals and surprises. The movie adds one ridiculous plot device at the end (involving a hacker) that thankfully is not present in Tokarczuk’s book.

The narrator of the novel is Janina Duszejko, a woman who seems to be in her 60s. She lives in a mountainous region of Southern Poland near the border of the Czech Republic. Her rural village is full of tourists and part-time residents in the summertime, but Duszejko is one of the few who lives there year-round. She lives alone, looks after the vacation homes of absentee landlords, and teaches English courses at the local elementary school. One night, Duszejko (she hates being called by her first name) is awakened by her neighbor Oddball (she assigns personal nicknames to her friends and acquaintances), who informs her that another neighbor, a poacher called Big Foot, is dead in his home. His death seems to have a natural explanation. In the weeks that follow, however, a series of deaths occur in the village that appear to be murders. Duszejko and her friends are not particularly sorry for the victims, who were into some bad activities, but they nonetheless take an interest in the murders and come up with their own theories on the suspicious deaths, with Duszejko’s theory the strangest of all.

The most interesting aspect of this novel is the complex character of its narrator. Duszejko has two obsessions. The first is astrology. She believes everything is governed by the stars, and if she knows a person’s date and exact time of birth, she can pretty much predict the course and outcome of their life. Duszejko’s other defining characteristic is her emphatic belief in animal rights. She abhors all violence and cruelty towards animals, whether from abusive pet owners, hunters for sport, or consumers of meat. This conviction clashes with the community in which she lives, where hunting is a way of life. She lives down the road from a fox farm, and all the men in town are hunters. When she expresses her views on animal rights she is scoffed at as merely a crazy old woman.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is not a conventional murder mystery, in that there isn’t much emphasis placed on finding clues and solving the puzzle. It’s more about the people who live in this town, how they deal with the murders, and what it reveals about their characters. The actual identity of the killer is not difficult to guess, neither in the book nor the film. The killings in this hunting community, however, allow Tokarczuk to examine from a new and interesting perspective the ethics of how people relate to animals and nature. This is not a mystery for mystery genre fans, but the unique narrator and setting, along with Tokarczuk’s talent as a storyteller, make this an intriguing and compelling read for just about everyone else.

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