I’ve fallen in love with Olga Tokarczuk. She’s a Polish author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year with her book Flights, which I’ve just finished. Before that I read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, which the library got in for me. I loved it so much I bought it (from A&R, where else?) and am reading it again. It’s hard to describe it. At base it’s a multi-murder fiction, but that’s only the framework for some extraordinary, imaginative story-telling, encompassing astrology, pagan rites, philosophy, quirky humour, all set in a wild, freezing hamlet somewhere in the Polish wastelands near the Czech border. It sounds medieval but it’s fully modern, with references to smartphones, laptops, 4WDs etc. She writes with an astonishing mix of sophistication with occasional bursts of almost naiive simplicity that make me stop and mull over a sentence for quite a while before moving on. Often I found myself putting the book down and muttering, “That’s exactly what I feel/believe/think.” And she has a delightful sharp wit. Talking about a neighbour who was a writer, the main character says, “If I hadn’t known her so well, I’m sure I would have read her books.”
The main character is a former bridge construction engineer who became a teacher, now retired, and who’s a skilled astrologer, vegetarian, animal lover, environmentalist. She looks after everyone’s houses while they’re in town for the winter months. The hamlet is tiny, with only three (soon to be two) permanent residents. One by one others in the local area, mostly hunters, are found dead in the snow, with all kinds of animal prints all around their bodies. The teacher tries to persuade the local cops it’s the animals getting revenge for being hunted. Anyway, I won’t tell you any more. It’s wonderful writing. Give her a try.