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Olga Tokarczuk – Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead | Review

Title: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Author: Olga Tokarczuk

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 272

Rating: 4.5/5

This is potentially a late entry into my list of favourite books of the year, and so I’m definitely glad that I picked it up. I think I heard about it from BookTube, although I can’t remember where I first saw it. I mentioned it to my girlfriend in passing and then she grabbed me a copy for Christmas, and it turned out that Charlie Heathcote was reading it at the same time, so we did a buddy read.

It’s a Polish book that’s been translated, a sort of noir-ish literary fiction murder mystery, and it has some deep takes on life and philosophy that we can all learn from. It’s one of those rare books with a delicious mouth feel where for me at least, it was just a pleasure to read all of the way through. I didn’t want it to stop, but I guess eventually and inevitably, it had to.

If you’re looking for philosophical fiction with a poetic feel, you’re in luck. It also scores a few diversity points if that’s your thing, being written by a woman and originally in Polish. But those are all little bonuses, the icing on a delicious cake that I’m super glad I heard about.

I have no idea whether Charlie liked it as much as I did, but I’m sure he’ll be posting about it on Goodreads and on his BookTube channel, so you can find out there. Enjoy!

Learn more about Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones | Review

Title: The Lovely Bones

Author: Alice Sebold

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 330

Rating: 3/5

I have pretty mixed feelings about this one, mainly because I didn’t really enjoy reading it but I still feel glad that I picked it up. I think it’s one of those where most of the fuss about it comes from the writing style, and in my case, I didn’t really like it. In fact, it read almost like translated fiction, which kind of weirded me out. I actually checked the front to see whether a translator was listed, but no dice. It turns out it’s not translated, it’s just a little weird.

Then there’s the ending, which honestly just infuriated me and made me wish I’d not stuck with it. I don’t think I would have if it hadn’t been a buddy read. As is, I don’t really have too much to say about this and I don’t really know what I’ll have to talk about with her. It was a slow burner, heavily character driven and just written in a way that I didn’t enjoy. What more can I say?

I did like the actual idea here, I think it was just the execution that I wasn’t a fan of. This seems to be the case quite a lot with books that I pick up purely because they’re popular, and indeed it’s one of the reasons why I’ve been being more selective recently. But I’d bought this one a while back and I thought it would be a shame to get rid of it, and so here we are.

Would I recommend it? I mean, probably not, I can’t think of anyone who I think should go out of their way to give it a go. But at the same time, it’s not like it’s a bad book. It’s just boring and a little bland with too much to say for itself. So there’s that.