64 Time August 26, 2019
TimeOff Books
Tokarczuk trained as a psychologist before becoming an award-winning writerPart murder mystery, part fairy tale,
Drive Your Plow is a thrilling philo-
sophical examination of the ways in
which some living creatures are privi-
leged above others. Tokarczuk’s pro-
tagonist is delightfully specific: she
studies astrology, translates William
Blake’s poetry and makes bizarre proc-
lamations (“I must always wash my feet
thorough ly before bed”). As more bod-
ies pile up, Janina inserts herself into the
investigations. The people around her
don’t find her quite as amusing; the po-
lice brush her off as a crazy old lady. But
she believes there must be a tie between
the dead bodies and the routine killing
of animals, even if nobody wants to hear
it. The novel turns from humorous and
outlandish to controlled and command-
ing as Janina methodically ties the vic-
tims’ horoscopes to their brutal deaths.
Though Tokarczuk builds suspense
with swift and urgent prose, what cap-
tivates most is Janina’s intensity, stem-
ming from her experience of the world
as an outsider and an advocate for the
voiceless. She proves that her demands
are ones worth heeding, challenging the
ways in which people decide who—and
what—is worth protecting. in an isolaTed Polish village,
Big Foot has been found dead. No,
not that Big Foot. In Olga Tokarczuk’s
newly translated novel, Drive Your Plow
Over the Bones of the Dead, eccentric
60-something narrator Janina Duszejko
prefers epithets to given names. It’s her
neighbor Oddball who knocks on her
door and takes her to their other neigh-
bor Big Foot’s house, where they find
his mangled body on the kitchen floor.
After calling the police, Oddball tells
Janina they must dress him—it would
be “inhuman” to leave him in his dirty
clothes—which is when they find a
deer’s bone lodged in his mouth.
The relationship between animals
and humans lies at the center of Drive
Your Plow. The novel is short-listed for
the Man Booker International Prize,
which Tokarczuk last year became the
first Polish writer to win, for her novel
Flights. Drive Your Plow, originally pub-
lished in Polish in 2009, follows Janina,
who is passionate about animal rights
and at odds with the many hunters in
her community—including, before his
death, Big Foot. And his demise is just
the beginning of this winding, imagina-
tive, genre-defying story.
FICTION
Horoscopes that help solve homicides
By Annabel Gutterman
NONFICTION
Looking inward,
looking back
In these buzzy August releases,
three writers explore how they
became who they are and
where they fit into the world:TRICK MIRROR
By Jia Tolentino
The nine essays in the New
Yorker writer’s debut collection
poke at the unnerving anxieties
that plague contemporary
society, from the pervasiveness
of scamming to what it means
to live a life on the Internet.THE YELLOW HOUSE
By Sarah M. Broom
Broom paints a stirring portrait
of New Orleans as she explores
100 years of family history
through the home where she
was raised, which was later
destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.IN THE COUNTRY OF WOMEN
By Susan Straight
Straight’s memoir, addressed to
her three daughters, chronicles
six generations of female
ancestors from Switzerland to
Jim Crow–era Mississippi.
—A.G.