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A review by megansmith
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I have so many mixed feelings about this book!
I will say, I really disliked a lot of the beginning and middle on account of it feeling so slow. Anything interesting is stuck in about 20 pages total of the book while most of the rest of the book ends up being the main character waxing poetic on random meanderings for some time. At times, I liked her monologues and they made me think deeply about my relationship to the animal world. Other times, I found myself so frustrated because she was so out of touch! The irony of being so in love with animals but hating humans (other than one brief scene) was not lost on me, and I am sure it's Olga Tokarczuk's intention to do so, but I really grew to hate it. I'm normally fine reading books about bad people, or narrators I disagree with, but this book really pushed that feeling for me and I grew to really dislike the narrator in this novel. But back to my earlier point, this book felt incredibly slow and I found myself spacing off during sections that ran long for literally no reason.
The writing itself was strong, just...drawn out. Where this book redeemed itself a bit for me is in the end. I had a sense that the narrator was an unreliable source and I knew it for sure to be true after the third death in the book. The rest didn't feel like a surprise to me but I really wanted to commend the author for setting up this unreliable narrator and executing on the concept well. I really liked this and the last 20-30 pages is where this book picked up for me.
Overall - I can see where the awards and accolades come from in this book, but it fell a little flat for me in a couple different aspects. I think it's worth a read but it's not high up on my list for reads this year.
I will say, I really disliked a lot of the beginning and middle on account of it feeling so slow. Anything interesting is stuck in about 20 pages total of the book while most of the rest of the book ends up being the main character waxing poetic on random meanderings for some time. At times, I liked her monologues and they made me think deeply about my relationship to the animal world. Other times, I found myself so frustrated because she was so out of touch! The irony of being so in love with animals but hating humans (other than one brief scene) was not lost on me, and I am sure it's Olga Tokarczuk's intention to do so, but I really grew to hate it. I'm normally fine reading books about bad people, or narrators I disagree with, but this book really pushed that feeling for me and I grew to really dislike the narrator in this novel. But back to my earlier point, this book felt incredibly slow and I found myself spacing off during sections that ran long for literally no reason.
The writing itself was strong, just...drawn out. Where this book redeemed itself a bit for me is in the end.
Overall - I can see where the awards and accolades come from in this book, but it fell a little flat for me in a couple different aspects. I think it's worth a read but it's not high up on my list for reads this year.