The Magic in the Anatomy of Life - A Review of 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead' by Olga Tokarczuk

By Nicola Sebastian @sebzhino

Tokarczuk’s story follows our narrator, Mrs Duszejko, who is obsessed with Astrology, Animals and viewing the world by stripping it to its simplest core. One night she discovers the body of a fellow neighbour, and as more deaths follow - the correlation between them all being men who hunted, we’re sent on a wild goose chase through the village and its surroundings. As this mystery deepens, the book plunges into a dark and thought-provoking exploration of Animal hunting, Religion and Spirituality, Relationships of all sorts, Life and Death. 

“Everything will pass. The wise man knows this from the start and has no regrets.”

The book took a while to fully invite me in, but once it did, imagery took over me through the authors’ writing. Olga Tokarczuk manages brilliantly to bring her characters to life through the lens of Duszejko, often withholding their names and instead naming them herself based on the trait she finds most noticeable - a feeling, or a vibe. It's an interesting reflection of how we perceive others through lenses of our own biases.

One of the most intriguing choices in the novel is the capitalisation of certain objective objects, such as “Death” and “Soul.” This technique induces the everyday with a sense of importance, subtly urging the reader to reflect on the meaning and the value of our very own existence. “To my mind, Death should be followed by the annihilation of matter. [...] The Souls would travel at the speed of light into the light. If such a thing as the Soul exists.” Such reflections elevate the novel beyond its crime-fiction framework, transforming it into a meditation on life’s deepest questions. It’s not only the names in this book which are led with a capital letter, but things which deserve our attention, and ones to cherish in the simple everyday.

Although this is a story of an unreliable narrator, I still found myself feeling sorry for Mrs Duszejko.  In this way, Tokarczuk succeeds in making her emotions resonate well enough to make me feel sorrow at the closing of the last page. After I came to the end of the story, I found myself wondering what other adventures Duszejko encountered. It is silly really. I think sometimes we think that life is a series of extraordinary events, but when in reality it could simply be something in the shape of a smooth boulder that is placed upon our hearts when we come onto the Earth, and only when we have moved or removed it, and lived through it in the form of this big canon event, does our life start to make sense. Only then are we stripped down to the most basic of things, Animals. What I mean by this is, I am imagining that there are more stories to tell, especially following Duszejko’s lifestyle, but maybe, in fact, this story is the only one she had within her. This makes me question the importance of our lives, and whether we simply apply too much pressure to ourselves, to be something. 

Don’t get me wrong, this is an intriguing crime novel that links our internal meditations with the external world. It’s just that once you set the fiction aside, the political punchline is still there boldly in the centre. Life is a cycle that ends with death. 

“But the source of my excitement is understanding.”

Throughout reading the novel, I found myself becoming confused over the plot lines. We find out later in the text that Mrs Duszejko had lost her two dogs, her ‘Little Girls’, and fractions of her past are woven in between the prose that reflect her thought processes of the current moment. I think it's due to Tokarczuk’s brilliant writing that the reader is compelled to stay with the story. Sometimes one tends to get lost in what Duszejko is talking about - her, self-description of a crazy woman is valid during these points, but luckily all is tidied up at the end. As a standalone novel, it feels like a complete piece of art - one that exists fully on its own. 

Chapters begin with a quote from William Blake. It is important for stories to have a reference point, such as a historical event or a writer. Furthermore, it is essential for a book to cater to a niche audience, while a broader audience can learn more - in this case, this is Astrology - and discover parts that resonate with their exploration of life. I suppose that is what books are for: you encounter elements of life, familiar yet undiscovered, and then it’s up to you to go and explore them.

Nevertheless, I gave  this book four stars. What didn’t work for me was the confusion of the centre point as the story went on. But even so, could this be on purpose? The lady in her sixties who is losing track of everything around her? With the use of language, one must take themselves away from it and really understand the narrator - something that gets easier as the story goes on. We can sometimes be unsure whether to support or disprove Duszejko's viewpoints (this goes for anything in life), however due to the nature of her surroundings and what we learn of her loneliness, we excuse it. She acknowledges herself as a crazy old lady, however as we really manage to enter the corners of her mind, one begins to feel in awe alongside a sort of hope. With age, we do become ourselves; with age, we do settle on our own ideals and sit on them comfortably even around differentiating ones. It's a relief that confusion of our own personal ‘normal’ does not last forever.  

I would recommend this for lovers of prose, and ones intrigued in interesting sentence structure. Unconventional thinkers and those who see the importance of nature (which surely should be all of us?). I must admit there were a few lines in which I asked myself, “Am I to be a vegan?”. It made me realise and recognise things I have yet to touch upon. 

“It’s happening all the time and everywhere.”

I don't want to describe this as a crime novel, I feel it to be an injustice. Sure, it included the police and a murder, elements which surely make a show-stopping crime book. More so it is a piece of literary fiction touching on the fact that we must be nice not only to other humans but animals too. “People have a duty towards Animals to lead them - in successive lives - to Liberation. We’re all travelling in the same direction, from dependence to freedom, from ritual to free choice.’” Humans tend to get selfish once they are caught up in their own business. They rarely bother checking up on extended family, let alone the Animals that roam their nearby forests. Most humans barely even have access to the wilderness, and that's exactly what they start classifying it as - wilderness. It is out in the wild, because it was born there, and it is to survive on its own terms with no one else's help. They're kind of like us. These Animals. We’re born but, most of our parents are literate enough to teach us about life. We learn survival skills, and so do the creatures in the wilderness, it's just that our survival skills differ from each other. Does that make us any different? Are we not simply just animals? 

“We have a view of the world but Animals have a sense of the world.”

The book does a good job at making the reader question things upon further reflection. Even throughout Duszejkos prose she herself grapples with uncertainty - a woman of many talents who lacks the answers. Yet, she encourages one to look further in and ask blatantly obvious questions, knowing we will never come to a conclusion. 

Despite other reviews, and also the themes that this book contains, I don't personally wish to view it as magic realism, because if I did then we would have to admit that everything in our lives is magic, and no one is ready for that conversation. I think the trick is that Olga Tokarczuk tries to make you believe that this could be a magical fantastical story, but in truth it is simply reality. It is what happens. The planets orbit, animals have minds of their own too, and just like us, they die.

“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.”