Read Women discussion

Our December #Women in Translation read is Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Polish author, Olga Tokarczuk. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. The main character, Janina, is an astrologist of a certain age who lives in a secluded Polish village right on the Czech-Polish border.

From the NYTimes review comes this excerpt:

This marvelously weird and fablelike mystery, originally published in Poland a decade ago and now translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, opens in the dead of winter on a remote Polish plateau so close to the Czech Republic the phone signal crosses it “with no regard for the national borders.” Emergency operators pick up in the wrong country, which is a problem for the novel’s cantankerous narrator, Janina Duszejko, the caretaker for the seven summer homes that dot the plateau. Locals see her as “an old woman, gone off her rocker living in this wilderness. Useless and unimportant.” She spends her days poring over the poetry of William Blake and “The Complete Ephemerides, 1920-2020.” Her socialization is limited, her empathy reserved for inanimate objects (a refurbished house “looked as if it wanted to be left in peace to carry on decomposing”) and animals, which “show the truth about a country”...

(might include spoilers, depending on how you define them) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/bo...

NPR Review (spoiler alert): https://www.npr.org/2019/08/16/751323...

Olga Tokarczuk, 2018 Nobel Laureate in Literature

From the wiki bio:
"Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk ([tɔˈkart͡ʂuk]; born 29 January 1962) is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland; in 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". ... [She] was born in Sulechów near Zielona Góra, in western Poland. She is the daughter of two teachers, Wanda Słabowska and Józef Tokarczuk, and has a sister. Her parents were resettled from former Polish eastern regions after the Second World War; one of her grandmothers was of Ukrainian origin. The family lived in the countryside in Klenica, some 11 mi away from Zielona Góra, where her parents taught at the People's University and her father also ran a school library in which she found her love of literature.[ Her father was a member of the Polish United Workers' Party. As a child, Tokarczuk liked Henryk Sienkiewicz's popular novel In Desert and Wilderness and fairy tales, among others. Her family later moved south-east to Kietrz in Opolian Silesia, where she graduated from the C.K. Norwid High school.[15] In 1979, she debuted with two short stories in prose published in youth scouting magazine Na Przełaj (No. 39, under the pseudonym Natasza Borodin).

Tokarczuk went on to study clinical psychology at the University of Warsaw in 1980, and during her studies, she volunteered in an asylum for adolescents with behavioural problems. After graduation in 1985, she moved to Wrocław and later to Wałbrzych, where she worked as a psychotherapist in 1986–89 and teachers' trainer in 1989–96. In the meantime, she published poems and reviews in the press, and published a book of poetry in 1989. Her works were awarded at Walbrzych Literary Paths (1988, 1990). Tokarczuk quit to concentrate on literature, she also said she felt "more neurotic than [her] clients."[12] She worked doing odd jobs in London for a while, improving her English, and went for literary scholarships in the United States (1996) and in Berlin (2001/02)...."

excerpted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_To...

Nobel Prize Interview (Youtube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-WKo...

From the Guardian, on her Nobel win: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Jen is leading our discussion. Let us know if you're planning to join or, if you've read Flights or Drive Your Plow already, share your thoughts.

I’m planning to start this one after my current fiction read.

I read this a couple of years ago and loved it. I've also read Flights, which I enjoyed. But Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is my favorite because of the protagonist. She was quirky, eccentric, and an absolute delight.

I'm just about to start this. Looking forward to our discussion.

Carol, thank you, it's awesome you collect all this extra content about the reads.
I expect to get started with this one in the second week of December- hoping to make a nice dent in it in airplanes and airports when I fly back to the US!
Glad to see there'll be at least a few of us chatting it up here.

I read this two years ago. Looking back I see I gave it 3*, but in hindsight it is a 4* star read. I thought the storyline was interesting, but what made it extra entertaining was the humour. I also appreciated the poetry, and the older protaganist.
I saw an interview with her English translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones and she said that the book was written to satisfy a publisher commitment while Tokarczuk was writing The Books of Jacob.

I have read the first two chapters now and I’m enjoying the main character/narrator very much. She’s so cranky! And I love her method of naming people. I’m keeping an eye on how reliable she is as a narrator but am intrigued to see where this novel will go.

I read this book a few years ago and thought it was just ok.
I love the eccentric elderly characters created by Alina Bronsky much more.

I also read Flights and that went completely over my head.

I am looking forward to following your discussions on this read.

Sophie wrote: "I read this book a few years ago and thought it was just ok.
I love the eccentric elderly characters created by Alina Bronsky much more.

I also read Flights and that went complet..."

Sophie, I also enjoy Alina Bronsky's novels. I've read a couple of them. Baba Dunja's Last Love is my favorite. She is such a great character.

I'd never heard of Bronsky, but I see there's alot of love for Baba Dunja. It sounds fun- adding to my TBR.

I will start DYPOBD today! Yay for being way ahead of schedule since My Sister the Serial Killer turned out to be so fast-paced.

Ok I'm 4.5 chapters in.
I like aspects of the narrator- her care for the animals, her feistiness, her life in the middle of nowhere- but I'm not quite endeared to her yet. Maybe I'm not meant to be... I'm kinda rolling my eyes at the astrology...
I'm enjoying the atmosphere though- remote country, the community, all the snow! It's definitely the right time of year for reading this one.

I have about 75 pages left here.

The main character has grown on me some, and the community of people more so. The astrology is making more sense with her eccentric character but I do just skim those paragraphs of course. It's pretty entertaining now that it's become a murder mystery and I'm loving all this story of the animals.

I read this in 2022 and had low expectations going in - in fact it was given to me by a client who follows my blog and seeing that she had abandoned it after about 50 pages made me even less inclined to read it.

Perhaps going in with such low expectations is why I loved it so much, because it far exceeded them, it surprised me at every turn, it made me laugh, I loved the eccentricity and transgressive nature of the main character. I loved the nicknames she gave other members of the community. I loved the references to Blake and Astrology, not because I understood them, but because they remind us not to take ourselves so seriously, but to allow each other their own passions, to take joy in that.

I loved that the ideas presented by this novel caused a genuine political uproar in the author's home country, that she had naively assumed it would be possible to discuss the dark areas of that country's history.

It was my One Outstanding Read of 2022.
Full review at clairemcalpine.com
First impressions after reading here on GR: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I had to go back and look. I read this in 2020 and gave it a 4-star rating. I however did not write a review! I do remember that I really liked it but felt a little intimidated by it while reading it. I'm not sure I understood it's "purpose" enough even at the end. It is definitely worth a reread at some point. One take-away that has always stuck with me (and I'll paraphrase here), was her question that with all the pain and killing in the world - what is the matter with us? A question I ask myself every day...

I finished this yesterday and it lingers with me. It grew on me gradually, maybe because I also went in skeptical. I have seen in reviews complaints that animal life is valued over human, but I think- it's fiction! It's a murder mystery! It's raising questions about humanity, but it's not like we're meant to be convinced- yes, in some cases killing people is fair.
I love the questions it raises and it does so in such an accessible way. There is so much charm in the humor and the cast of characters and the setting. And her writing is great! I think it's a cozy mystery but I'm not sure. I'm not a big mystery/thriller reader, though my interest is growing.
I love the NYT review Carol linked in first post. It captures it well and I love the quotes they pulled.
Duszejko, the main character, is like those iconic rebels who remain unswayed by conventional belief systems and societal pressures, who may be considered radical but really there's sense and humanity in their vision and they're just brave and principled enough to fight for it. I mean, the letters to the police, the outburst in church, unphased as to what people will think of her, but one by one she finds her people. It's romantic.

I finished this last week but I hadn't posted anything yet because I'm still thinking about how I feel about it. It is quite a coincidence this month that both of our reads create sympathetic characters that take immoral actions. Once again I find myself respecting the talent of the author in creating an easy-to-read work that provokes so much thought although I don't think this work is as successful as the other.

I even took the time to read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake to see whether it added anything to my understanding. The title of this novel was taken from one of the Proverbs of Hell (the full proverb is actually "drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead" but I don't really think it makes that much difference to the meaning that the title wasn't the full proverb.) There was another proverb that I thought was kind of relevant given the main protagonist of the story: "Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity". I guess I found this proverb quite amusing because I feel as if Duszejko spends a great deal of the story (view spoiler)[ feigning incapacity but the revelation of who-did-it clearly makes it abundantly clear that she is not incapable. So it seems as if the author is having some fun with this proverb. (hide spoiler)]

Blake's work is a protest against what he saw as dogmatic religion where he refers to Good as "the passive that obeys reason", Evil as "the active springing from Energy" and suggests that "those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained". I definitely think that the author is writing a story that illustrates the outcome of that subscribing to that logic.

While the story raises plenty of interesting themes such as corruption, sanity, and society's judgment of older women, I don't think the ending really helps the final two. After the reveal, I felt that (view spoiler)[ Duszejko was extremely shrewd and calculating and that much of her behaviour was an act designed to hide what she had done. (hide spoiler)] Ultimately, I guess that I just have issues with the idea that (view spoiler)[ it is acceptable to murder people because the authorities are corrupted, or because we don't agree with something that other people do. (hide spoiler)] I suppose that if there had been consequences for the actions taken, I may have felt differently about it.

Interestingly, the Plough is a prominant formation of 7 stars in Ursa Major containing the Pointers that indicate the direction to the Pole Star. So that makes a nice little connection to all the astrology discussion in the novel as well.

Liesl wrote: "I finished this last week but I hadn't posted anything yet because I'm still thinking about how I feel about it. It is quite a coincidence this month that both of our reads create sympathetic chara..."

Yes, I wanted to say, this was an unexpectedly good pairing for December! The big overlapping in themes, yet plenty different so it doesn't feel like two versions of the same thing.

I finished this the other day and also have been mulling it over. I enjoyed it but was a bit let down about the ending. (view spoiler)[I was not exactly surprised about the who-did-it revelation, as I suspected we were dealing with an unreliable narrator. But I also had bought into the idea that the animals were responsible, and I was embracing that! (hide spoiler)]

Questions I had: Why were random words capitalized? Was this just another instance of the narrator's eccentricities? Why was the Czech border mentioned so often? Obviously, the community lived nearby, so maybe that's all it was but it felt like there was something deeper going on there.

I loved the remoteness of the setting and quite envied the narrator's relative isolation and her winter job going around and checking on others' homes. Not a bad way to spend the winter!

Susan wrote: "I finished this the other day and also have been mulling it over. I enjoyed it but was a bit let down about the ending. [spoilers removed]

Questions I had: Why were random words capitalized? Was t..."

Yes the setting! This aspect really reminded me The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, which I love.
And yea, personally I see the capitalizing of words as a reflection of her eccentric nature, perhaps her inclination to revere things that don't ordinarily receive such attention, like how she is about animals.
I think the NYTimes article brings up the Czech border theme but I forget exactly what they said. But Claire has alluded to this work coming across as a statement against aspects of Polish culture, so perhaps Czech Republic is representing a world of greater enlightenment. The beloved bookshop is there, and did the narrator say something about certain celestial bodies (Venus?) being more visible/accessible there. And of course (view spoiler)[in the end it's where she escapes to safety (hide spoiler)].

""If I wanted to write my memoirs, how would I go about it?" I said, sounding confused" (p146)

I took this to be her memoir. Something she wrote while (view spoiler)[ in hiding in the Czech Republic. (hide spoiler)] So what we read are her personal memories of what happened during that period of time. Like Jen said, I thought the capitalization of random words in mid-sentence reflects the things that are important to her.

From what I have read, Poland was becoming more conservative. Moving to the far-right and as part of that animal and women's rights were being limited or denied. This was in contrast to the politics of the Czech Republic. (view spoiler)[ Given that she ends up living there, I suppose that her experience of life there also filters through into the story as she tells it. (hide spoiler)]

I just started this recently and really enjoy her voice. I’m sorry for my absence recently but just have a lot suddenly going on both at home and at work. Like many of you I love our elderly protagonist and was laughing so hard when she broke the dog out only to have it look her straight in the eyes the next morning and run back home. I’ve had Bronsjy in my tbr but have yet to tackle any of her books. Really enjoying this one though so far

Guys I just finished this and cackled at the responses. I felt all the same like why is this old lady suddenly so shrewd and calculating but dang it if she didn’t get revenge for her babies. It made me think of an elderly lady is up to no good which I also loved. I think the idea of an elderly lady being a killer just tickles me. It is a trope that I find I can easily and happily embrace. Idk what that says about me lol

Anita wrote: "Guys I just finished this and cackled at the responses. I felt all the same like why is this old lady suddenly so shrewd and calculating but dang it if she didn’t get revenge for her babies. It mad..."

Same, with respect to underestimated elderly woman killers. You might want to check out The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo, which has by Korean Lit standards a happy ending : )

Same, Anita! Oh and of course no apology necessary about how or if you join. I also love the senior lady serial killer and how she quietly resented and laughed at the folks who were dismissive and ageist toward her.
Adding Carol’s senior slayer to my TBR.

This is the only book of Tokarczuk's I've actually liked, I'm a bit at odds with her Jungian take on the world, it clashes with aspects of my own beliefs. But I like the anti-speciesism message underlying the book that aligns with work by philosophers like Singer and Derrida, mainly because it's something I subscribe to myself. I also like the critique of aspects of Polish rural culture and the emphasis on meat eating and hunting, it was/is a destination for holidaying hunters. Like the protagonist I see no reason for human life being privileged over other animals' rights - that attitude is one of the major contributing factors to the mess our planet's now in.

I also liked the extensive use of Blake's mythology which I think acts as a counter to typical human-centred, post-Enlightenment ways of thinking about the world. I think astrology is used in the same way in the narrative to expose/comment on dominant belief systems and notions of what's reasonable or rational as just one way of thinking among many - also to comment on Catholicism in Polish culture.

Alwynne wrote: "This is the only book of Tokarczuk's I've actually liked, I'm a bit at odds with her Jungian take on the world, it clashes with aspects of my own beliefs. But I like the anti-speciesism message und..."

Thanks for sharing, Alwynne. You're articulating wonderfully what I appreciated too. The anti-speciesism message touches me as well, and that it's central here I think is bold. So I love that about the author. And I did appreciate the story regularly bringing me to a "bigger picture", not-human-centered view of life.

Carol wrote: "Same, with respect to underestimated elderly woman killers. You might want to check out The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo, which has by Korean Lit standards a happy ending : )..."

It looks interesting. Thanks for the recommendation, Carol. I've put it on my TBR.

Carol wrote: "Anita wrote: "Guys I just finished this and cackled at the responses. I felt all the same like why is this old lady suddenly so shrewd and calculating but dang it if she didn’t get revenge for her ..."

Going on the list for sure, thank you Carol.

I am intrigued by her many references to Blake and thinking of picking up some of his work, but honestly lost on where I might start.

These might be useful for context?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/arti...

https://st-alfege.org.uk/Articles/565...

Anita wrote: "Carol wrote: "Anita wrote: "Guys I just finished this and cackled at the responses. I felt all the same like why is this old lady suddenly so shrewd and calculating but dang it if she didn’t get re..."

Personally, I think Blake's art work is far more powerful than his poetry. Like you, I felt like I should investigate his work to see if it added anything additional to my reading. I didn't really find it more illuminating to have done that.

Anita wrote: "I am intrigued by her many references to Blake and thinking of picking up some of his work, but honestly lost on where I might start..."

Anita, Blake was revolutionary in his thinking. He was highly critical of institutionalized religion and on the impact of industrialization on the quality of life. He uses simple, almost child-like language in many of his poems, but his ideas are complex. You can find many of his poems online at the Poetry Foundation.

Below is a link to "London," one of his most famous poems.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

I also recommend you take a look at "The Chimney Sweeper," (both of them) "The Garden of Love," "Tyger," "Holy Thursday," "Jerusalem," "Infant Sorrow," "I saw a Chapel," "The Lamb."
These are all available on the Poetry Foundation site.

As you may have gathered, I am a big fan of Blake's poetry. I hope you enjoy.

Tamara wrote: "Anita wrote: "I am intrigued by her many references to Blake and thinking of picking up some of his work, but honestly lost on where I might start..."

Anita, Blake was revolutionary in his thinkin..."

Tamara, this is comment gold. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.

Alwynne wrote: "These might be useful for context?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/arti...

https://st-alfege...."

Definitely. Thank you, Alwynne!

Alwynne wrote: "These might be useful for context?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/arti...

https://st-alfege...."

Thank you both! I’ve read the poetry foundation article and found a few I will pursue. Thank you so much for sharing your insight and recommendations Tamara.

You're more than welcome, Anita.