A review by mvindc
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk

4.0

This book is impressive to be sure--but I didn't really find it a particularly enjoyable read. Most of that is honestly just the size and scope of it. It's difficult for me to follow families over multiple generations and multiple countries without a bit more guidance than was provided, and when you throw in the fact that everyone changes their name half-way through (!!!) this book required a lot of focus to get through. A lot of the little details were lost on me (whose children married whose, who moved with Jacob's entourage at various points, etc), which I think would have added to the rich complexity of the novel. But I was already struggling under the weight of the complexity of the main topic of the novel, which was the religion of the main characters, and the evolution of that religion.

Honestly, I was so excited to read this book because I loved Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and there's a bit of that wit and a lot of that philosophy in here for sure. But I think you really have to be in the mood for something this big and heavy, and mostly my memory of this book will be just the feeling of trying to get through it before I had to return it to the library!