Another Good Read

The second novel I brought to Malaysia was Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I'd heard very good things about it, and it certainly didn't disappoint. I sort of expected it to be quite a demanding read - coming from a Nobel Laureate and with that striking title from Blake - but it turned out to be highly accessible and quite the page-turner, though I think that as a murder mystery it doesn't pass real muster.

I suppose what worked for me was the engaging voice of its half-mad narrator, Mrs Duszejko. (I won't call her Janina, since she hates the name.) Her obsessions curiously aligned with a number of my own, though I can't say I share her delight in Astrology, so it was easy to enjoy the ranting aspect of the novel, of which there is plenty. Also her keen sense of the irony of it all meant that a potentially bleak text turned out to be genuinely funny - as well as genuinely bleak.

I'm now sort of half on the lookout for The Books of Jacob, Ms Tokarczuk's magnum opus, though I suspect it isn't likely to be as directly rewarding as Drive Your Plow.