Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead cover art

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

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Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

By: Olga Tokarczuk
Narrated by: Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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About this listen

With Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, Man Booker International Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel.

In a remote Polish village, Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her 60s, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. She is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; she’s unconventional, believing in the stars; and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken.

When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, Duszejko becomes involved in the investigation. By no means a conventional crime story, this existential thriller by ‘one of Europe’s major humanist writers’ (Guardian) offers thought-provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice against marginalized people, animal rights, the hypocrisy of traditional religion, belief in predestination - and caused a genuine political uproar in Tokarczuk’s native Poland.

©2020 Olga Tokarczuk (P)2021 Fitzcarraldo Editions Crime Fiction International Mystery & Crime Mystery Women Sleuths Women's Fiction Fiction Detective Witty

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All stars
Most relevant  
Bit wacky, dark and pretty funny at times. Reader felt like the exact right voice for it

Strange little book

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At first I was unsure about the reader but I grew to love her brisk tone. And although I admired it from the start, I just slipped into that world over time. I loved the mix of deep and profound exploration and the every day detail of life. This is just the beginning of my enjoyment of this fantastically ambitious and powerful writer. I have lined up the two others on Audible.

I grew to love this book

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Reading other reviews, it is clear that this novel is very well received. The feelings about the narration is where the reviewers differ hugely.
As many others, I was sceptical about the translator reading the novel, and at the start I thought she was terribly stilted and her voice forced.
However, I soon grew accustomed to her voice and ended up thinking it had the perfect pitch. Even her male voices were the character’s (not the reader’s) attempt to imitate them in her head, invariably making fun of all these guys she loathed.
In all I thought it was a unique and surprising story with credible characters.

Unusual

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The story is highly evocative and I found myself swept up in the rich characters and the twisting plot. Well worth a listen.

Stellar performance

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I really enjoyed the story and felt as if I was there, which doesn’t happen with a lot of stories. I liked the narrator. I was glad of the outcome too!

Detailed, Dark and Funny!

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Surrender any expectations of what you like. Meet the story and narration on their own terms and by the end you will love it.

Surrender to it.

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I understand the narration is an artistic choice, but in this case it makes the writing hard to take in. It’s great writing too, which makes it all the more frustrating the narrator sounds like a knock off Miss Marple. A shame.

Narration gets in the way.

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The storyline was very quirky and original - quite unexpected murder mystery. I loved the characters, especially the narrator. I also loved the descriptions of the settings. The performance was great, just how I imagined the narrator to be.

Quirky and atmospheric

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A cryptic, beautiful story that demands a second read. The writing, as always with Tokarczuk, is top notch. The narrator makes some pretty basic errors around phrasing (a few sentences don't actually make sense the way she has split them up) and a few mispronunciations which could be forgiven but her style is rather tedious to listen to with a fairly predictable range of character voices that begin to sound rather similar. Definitely a reader rather than a storyteller. Despite this, give the book a go (or even better find a different recording), it deserves your attention.

A strange and meditative, beautiful story

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It’s a little slow to begin with but has an absolutely superb ending, making it thoroughly worth watching!

Amazing Ending

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