DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD by Olga Tokarczuk

First off, this is a very exciting title. Amazon tells me the title comes from Blake, whose work figures into this story at a pretty high level. Whereas I read the German edition, Gesang der Fledermäuse (“Song of the Bats.) Though I really enjoyed the book, I almost feel cheated, because the English title, which looks like it is probably a translation of the original Polish one (Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych) is much, much better. German titling conventions—film, books, whatever—I don’t understand them. Often times the translated versions are unrecognizable from the originals.

Second, this book, and one more reason which I don’t feel like sharing, have convinced me to become a vegetarian again. The novel centers around Janina Duszejko, a sixty-ish woman who finds herself at the center of an odd series of crimes. Murders, namely, of hunters or other, in her mind, enemies of animals. She loves animals, in fact prefers them to people, which I think is something any shy person who has ever been to a party and instead of mingling has befriended the host’s dog or cat can understand. Janina herself used to have two dogs, who she refers in the book to as her girls, but they have disappeared. She believes the hunters killed them. As I read, I thought a lot about my own relationship to animals over the course of my life. Most specifically, my two cats, first dearly departed Stanley, and now Flocke. I would definitely call them friends. My little buddies. Mostly, though, I’ve been thinking about how I feel bad about the pigs.

I live in Germany. People here eat so much meat. Especially Schwein. Pigs to the left, pigs to the right. But I’ve heard that pigs are actually kind of smart. The animal activists that set up their informational tables in the pedestrian zones from time to time always feature pictures of cute pink pigs next to pictures of cute dogs and place the question: why is it okay to eat one and not the other? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and about the horror certain Westerners display about dog-eating in more Eastern parts of the world, and how bizarrely hypocritical this is.

 I’ve also been thinking about lamb. Because over the past two years we’ve occasionally bought lamb to grill when we’ve gone shopping at the Turkish market. But when I was a kid, I could not, would not eat lamb for all the money in the world, and this was a huge point of contention with my parents. But what did they expect? They had given me a book, a story about a child named Jenny (of all names!) who had a lamb as a pet. I remember this book quite well. It was a Golden Book, for one thing. For another thing, Jenny gives her pet lamb a bath, then ties a ribbon around its neck and takes it with her to a birthday party. It’s a nice story. And then my parents expected me to eat lamb? Struggles over dinnertime are probably nothing new to any parent of small children, but it strikes me that if a child is refusing to eat because they are identifying with the dead animal on their plate, and are in fact horrified by its death, that is a sort of compassion that ought to be encouraged.

In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Janina is odd, and strange, and maybe even quite unlikeable. Her constant letters to the police explaining her theory that it is in fact the local animals who have been—quite understandably, this is self-defense we’re talking about—murdering the hunters and other animal-enemies strike me as the kind of quasi-hysterical missives I myself would have a very difficult time taking even the slightest bit seriously if I were on the receiving end. Which is kind of what happens in the novel, but also kind of not.

This is the second Tokarczuk novel I’ve read, the first being Flights, and she is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. Not sure what of hers I’ll read next. Die Jakobsbücher looks great, but I’ve noticed I sometimes have a problem reading historical novels in German because they contain a lot of nouns that are no longer used today. In other words, I have no problems understanding whatever actions are taking place, but I miss out a little bit when writers are describing the scene. But I may give it a try anyways. And just read a little slower than I usually would. As for Janina, I’m still thinking about some of the actions she takes, and about what my moral response is versus what it ought to be according to convention. And about what those conventions are and how much they matter. What is justice, truly?

As for me, I’m finally reconnecting to my childhood horror of the events that have to transpire in order to get meat onto my plate. I’ve gone back and forth on vegetarianism, but because I lacked any real conviction, it never stuck. When I was a child with no control over my own life, however, I had convicition and took the extraordinary step of spiriting meat from my plate and tossing it behind the radiator behind my chair at the table when my parents weren’t looking. Or hiding it somewhere in my bedroom when I was sent there to finish my plate. But now I’m an adult and get to think all I want about who gets to kill whom and why and what that means and how I will respond. That being said, hunting, which so horrifies Janina, isn’t high on my radar screen. But all those pigs (and cows, and lambs), bred for one thing, to end up at a butcher counter or shop, are. I feel bad about how long I didn’t feel bad. But I feel bad now. So hopefully, this time, vegetarianism will stick.