Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Olga Tokarczuk, whose name was totally unfamiliar to me, has garnered some of the highest literary awards, including a Nobel Prize for literature and the Man Booker International Prize. I would recommend listening to the book or perhaps listening while following along in the text, as the Polish names stumped me in my efforts to imagine how they were pronounced. Her works have been translated into over 40 languages.

This summary is taken from the book jacket since I can't imagine doing any better. "In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, [nicknamed by Janina as] Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?"

Publishers Weekly was effusive in their praise, concluding their review by saying "Tokarczuk's novel succeeds as both a suspenseful murder mystery and a powerful and profound meditation on human existence and how a life fits into the world around it. Novels this thrilling don't come along very often."

Similarly, Booklist lauds the work. Protagonist Janina ( a name she hates) "mounts her own inquiries [but]As the seasons change, Janina finds herself summarily dismissed by authorities and locals alike, all the while maintaining her beliefs that the perpetrators may not be human at all as the action surges toward a gripping conclusion. Mythical and distinctive, Tokarczuk's translated novel erupts off the page, artfully telling a linear tale while also weaving in the metaphysical, multilayered nuances of Janina's life."

I offer these reviews first because I wasn't particularly taken by the book. I could certainly sympathize with some of Janina's views, and probably nobody died who didn't deserve it, but I didn't really like any of the characters nor was I particularly interested in who was doing the killing.  I was somewhat inclined to believe Janina's theories about the killer(s) because nobody else was a plausible suspect, but the ending did surprise me.