Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by 

Olga Tokarczuk,

 

Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translation)

 3.97 

I just now finished the book and wanted to write how much I enjoyed it. What an original voice, written so clearly about deep subjects with a kind of poetry of its own. She managed to conjure a world of people and animals so particularly of their country (Poland and Czech Republic) and yet timeless and current. I'll be thinking about it for some time.
This book might not appeal to everyone. The protagonist is a "crazy old lady" who goes in for serious Astrology, hates hunters, is a vegetarian.....quirky, very bright and funny too.
"In Antonia Lloyd-Jones’s translation, the prose is by turns witty and melancholy, and never slips out of that distinctive narrative voice." from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
The action of the novel, the title could be translated as a quote from Blake’s Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead, takes place in a remote mountain settlement in the beautiful Kotlina Kłodzka. That quiet, tranquil location suddenly is a place of murders of local hunters, with only animals’ tracks left on the crime scene. Revenge of the game?

Favorite quotes: “The human psyche evolved in order to defend itself against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible for us to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.”

“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”other.”

― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

SIGN TALKER - THE ADVENTURE OF GEORGE DROUILLARD ON THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION

by 

James Alexander Thom

Sep 07, 2019  ·  edit

really liked it

 Last read August 2019 to September 2019.

The story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition is told in a long novel from the point of view of an Indian member travelling with the party. George Drouillard is a half-breed Shawnee/French Sign-Talker whose abilities included great hunting ability to feed this large group with game for the long trek as well as a sensitivity to the tribes and peoples they met and whose help they often needed along the way. Took me much longer to read than usual because I kept stopping to enjoy the scenery and comments on the feelings and sentiments of this amazing man whose appreciation of the beauty of nature, long descriptions of his personal beliefs and traditions enriched the story substantially. The personalities of Lewis and Clark stand out and the narrative is interspersed with parts of their daily journals.