Tag: Written

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

December 24, 2020
Authors P-T (By Surname)Fiction

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.

Jeffrey Eugenides – The Virgin Suicides | Review

September 13, 2020
Authors A-E (By Surname)Fiction

Title: The Virgin Suicides

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 250

Rating: 5/5

This book caught me off guard, because I wasn’t expecting it to be anywhere near as good as it actually was. I’d heard a few good things about Eugenides and I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen the movie based on this as well, although it was years ago and so I didn’t really remember it.

I’m glad of that, because for me, the real genius in this book is in the writing. Eugenides has this prose style that really just made me want to keep on devouring this book, and in a way it reminded me of Stoner by John Williams in the way that he could have been writing about literally anything and it would have still been a pleasure to read it.

I guess if I had to categorise it, I’d call this literary horror, and I think that’s a good thing. It might not be for everyone, and I’ve seen a lot of people particularly hating upon Middlesex because of the way he writes. Maybe he writes differently in that book, I don’t know.

All in all then, I was pretty impressed by this one and it’s already made me interested in seeing what else Eugenides has written. Although knowing my luck, it’ll turn out that he’s done something terrible and controversial and everyone will try to cancel me for enjoying his book. But it was good.

Learn more about The Virgin Suicides.