dnae 's review for:

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

1.0

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How poorly done. What a terrible waste of time! I have no idea how this won a Nobel Prize. I knew I shouldn't have trusted a white woman in dreads. We follow the narrations of Janina, an eccentric crone with a laundry list of quirks. They are brought up in an almost clinical, routine manner, never really adding much to the plot or the book in general, except for being fucking annoying. Because of this, the pacing was truly bad because a murder would happen and then it took maybe 10 chapters of just Janina's daily routines that have no connection to the plot aside from vague atmospherics and characterization. Choice words are capitalized a la Blake, the narrator makes up names for everyone as she feels their given names do not encompass who they are (really corny names, too, like Good News), astrology is used to badly insert a sort-of magical realist aspect, and veganism is used to justify everything. Janina bears witness to a series of murders committed in a fashion that suggests that animals are the real perpetrators but surprise (as we could tell from the first third of the book): it's Janina. There is no real pay-off, especially as her confession sounds like a tumblr post by an edgy fourteen year old. Which makes sense, because all of Janina/Tocarzuk's reflections on life only ever sound like vague and shallow platitudes.

This book added nothing to my life except for the negative opinion I formed of it.