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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I really enjoyed it mostly because I don’t get to read in Polish too often. The book got slow in the middle but then it picked back up and I liked the way the story wrapped around itself.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
wait.... this is going up a star rating because i kinda think about it all the time
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I can tell the author was having fun with this one. I can also tell the author is a Nobel Laureate. In broad strokes, the plot of this one is goofy to the point of parody: a murder mystery shot from the perspective of the half mad Polish spinster who writes to the police telling them that she's pretty sure the Deer did it. Taika Waititi style shit. That's where the joke lives, in the broad strokes. Moment to moment, though, this one is vividly philosophical and bursting at the thematic seams. Mrs Duszejko believes in predestination and deep ecology; she is well-read and articulate and philosophizes about everything; she finds her own form of existentialism between her constant neurotic health anxiety and her total confidence that the stars have predicted that her death will come far in the future. She absolutely carries this book, and it's a pleasure to spend 250 pages in her company. Tokarczuk's translated prose also hits a perfect sweet-spot between vivid and florid. Momentum, I guess, is a bit of a problem here; there are a few moments where Tokacczuk wasn't able to quite keep me hooked through a bit of narrative nonlinearity, and a few bits where our very unreliable narrator couldn't quite explain to me what I was seeing without giving the twists away (she knows more than she's saying, and she's always saying a lot); I definitely needed to do a bit of work to keep myself gripped in places. But I knew from the first few pages Mrs Duszejko was someone who I was going to have a lot of patience for.
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes