Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
by Olga Tokarczuk
The sharpest edge to Drive Your Plows Over the Bones of the Dead was that I didn’t know I was reading a mystery until the reveal was upon me. Sorry that you know it, now, but it can't be helped. I already loved the book when I thought it was magical realism—the natural world awake and alive and ready to seek revenge for humanity’s many misdeeds—or maybe metaphysical allegory, where ecological factors simultaneously overrode and underwrote mortal comprehension of human frailty.
Like any good mystery (of which I am expert now that I have read four whole mystery books, counting this one) I can see that the hints were there all along: “But the truth is that anyone who feels Anger, and does not take action, merely spreads the infection.”
I lived in NYC for 10 years and the Broad City finale made me cry, deal with it. (Relevant: They are at Sleep No More).
It was momentous when I realized that the plot was something to be solved rather than designed to shift the gestalt through which you view the world (could be...both?). That flipping sensation circumscribes the acceptable boundary around spoiler culture, cutting away the reactionary malarkey of willful plot-and-action blindness. Because I get it; it feels really nice to be completely blindsided by a twist or turn or experience. But that’s really, really extremely rare. Embrace it when it happens, sure, but if you’re hyped up for something, that means you already know about it. So don’t sweat the spoilers! I mean, does anyone go to Sleep No More without knowing you’re going to walk around? Or when CATS premiered, I bet it blew minds that the actors left the stage, which I find prima facie horrible, but it is a known thing if you go there on purpose now. So bring your kid to CATS I guess, because otherwise that aspect—arguably the most groundbreaking portion—will not be a surprise.
The structural mysteries that surround a work are so much more interesting to me than knowing that the Avengers defeat Thanos somehow. Not knowing the metes and bounds of a film or book or optional entertainment is pretty much impossible as an adult; so many things vie for my attention that I am not ever going to play Frog Fractions on a whim. It’s a simple Flash browser game that purports to teach children fractions. But since I’m talking about it—using the word “purports” of all things—there’s no way that’s all it is. And being surprised makes it awesome, but how can you truly be surprised when you’re playing it because everyone tells you, “Oh, you’ll be surprised!”?
I completely understand that to cull the chaff, you need a little taste just to wet your beak. There are too many options. Someone has to tell you that Nier: Automata is worth it even if you skipped Nier. The Chicago Tribune has to call this book “A brilliant literary murder mystery.” But once someone starts insisting you play Frog Fractions, the cat is already out of the bag, prowling the aisles, pawing at the audience. Yikes! You know something is up, and you’re braced for it. Sorry, CATS, I’ve got my spray bottle ready for you.
Can you recreate Frog Fractions? Yes. It is called Frog Fractions 2, and it was hidden within another game called Glittermitten Grove (not a joke).
One fun Sunday when I was in high school I drove up to see my sister, and the garbage car I bought with the spoils from my ice cream selling job promptly broke down. Two hours from school with no chance of rescue, I spent a full Monday playing her boyfriend’s copy of Starcraft and when she got home from work, she took me to the movies. I was very available.
I had no idea what she wanted to see. I would object to nothing, as I had nothing but time, mild guilt from missing school, and a complete inability to pay for anything. I am at least fifty percent certain I didn’t know the title of the movie or look at the poster as we walked in.
When I say I understand the desire to stay in the dark, I can only really understand it from a foundational lack of knowledge about whatever you’re about to see. I missed the whole Game of Thrones spoiler buzz, because circa 2002 I was nearly positive Lyanna Stark’s “Ned, promise me…” deathbed line meant she and Rhaegar were Jon Snow’s biological parents. Which still has not been confirmed in the books, and I haven’t watched the show, so if I’m right can someone please email me? And please tell me who the Green Knight was, or if there is any reason I should be embarrassed that “defending Sansa” was one of my listed interests on myspace?
Anyway, not being part of the Game of Thrones movement made me not internalize the spoiler zeitgeist; unless I could avoid knowing the genre or basic written structure of a book—I was about to start The Overstory when a friend told me it is a short story collection and simply knowing that cratered my excitement (look, I never claimed to be better about spoilers, just different)—I don’t really care if I get some mild reveals about what may happen. I think that’s why GoT really ushered in spoiler warnings in the mainstream: the safety net of your favorite people living, or dying momentously rather than ignobly broke genre conventions. All of a sudden, the audience didn’t know if the Frodo-equivelant was going to make it to the happily-ever-after. Horror movies kill people off all the time; high fantasy doesn't. People were getting a taste of actual structural ignorance, and conflating it with not knowing about plot points. Spoiler culture; it’s misguided.
For Drive Your Plow, I didn’t know the genre. I knew I was going to read it, so I didn’t look at the book jacket. I didn’t read someone else’s thoughts first. If you’re looking at reviews to decide if a piece of media is worth your time, you’re not going to be surprised in the same way. You cannot be, simply as a function of how time and/or brains work. You already know stuff, at the minimum the stuff I have told you. Which I don’t think is bad: your free time is limited, maybe, or you already have a lot of books and you can’t read everything. But I just want to point out that I think it is weird not to care if you know whether a book is about fantasy warriors or cowboys or Victorian-era ghosts or prose or rhyming couplets , but do care to know that Rey’s lineage is discussed in The Rise of Skywalker. Imagine going in to 1977 Star Wars and being like, “Okay, cool, here is some straight-up science fiction spaceships and, what, that’s this? Laser swords and wizards? Time to build a personality around this!”
Another example: If you know something is historical fiction but not historical fantasy, you are already circumscribed by genre on what might happen. When I read Pillars of the Earth, there was absolutely always a chance Merlin might show up and give the guy a magic chisel. I dunno, that book was long, lots of space for strangeness. But if you know—are “spoiled”—that it is grounded in reality, there go the magic tools, right out the window. Magic tools would fly out a window, I bet, proving the point that the power to build Cathedrals was inside you all along. And, again, it’s not wrong to want to read what you want to read: but how does knowing that the guy from Pillars doesn’t make a bet with the gods of Asgard that he can build the cathedral in three seasons in exchange for the goddess Freyja’s hand count for less of a “spoiler warning” than, like, knowing what actually happens in the book? Oh dang, some guy William gets killed I think, watch out! Also, no one uncovers the hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant while digging out the Cathedrals foundation, more’s the pity.
Spooky books are really good with not letting you know what is or isn’t off limits. The Wolf Border? Literally thought her baby was going to get eaten by wolves. It’s not even a horror book. Or is it?
Imagine not knowing anything about The Matrix before you saw it: “Hey, it’s that dude from Speed running around an office building and I have no reason to question that the world exists as it is presented to me.” Ah, yes, lucky boy that I am, that was the movie my sister brought me to during the whole stranded escapade. The only other time something similar happened was much less sanguine: there was a time I rented Stigmata when I intended to rent Dogma and I kept waiting for Ben Affleck to show up and make a joke about the bloody-handed priests. Sometimes I am just stupid. This is sadly not a joke. Well, the “sanguine” part is a joke. Because stigmatas are…well, you get it.
And while we’ve digressed this far, while not a bit further? The sturm and drang over spoilers in passive media—books, movies—seems to run counter to every single piece of content online that touches video games. And rarely have I gone as berserk as when I saw a website that offered me the fastest route to the “best” ending in Witcher III. Has anyone here played Witcher III? You play the titular Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, star of page and screen, and you get to decide what you meddle in and whom you walk away from. The game does a great job at melding what the plot wants you to do and what it allows you to do; Whatever happens is a viable non-fail state, and it changes the story a lot. Sometimes being nice makes bad things happen, sometimes failing to win a fistfight can make the world a better place, and sometimes the only thing you get to decide is how, exactly, everything goes to shit. It makes the whole game feel like your story, and it makes it very difficult to see the seams.
Now, to understand why the concept of “best” ending for The Witcher games sent me into paroxysms of rage, here’s a deep, dark spoiler for the second Witcher III expansion, Blood & Wine, which I am certain you will never play; Geralt—my version of Geralt, anyway—really liked the Duchess Anna Henrietta.
The Duchess Anna Henrietta, and a foppishly dressed Geralt hovering nearby (he lives to please).
Geralt and the Duchess even went on a mission together! When concern arose about her safety, Anna Henrietta drolly quipped that her hairpin could kill a man as dead as any sword. She was a hoot, and seemed like a nice ruler, so Geralt did everything he could to make sure Duchess Anna Henrietta stayed safe. uwu
Jump a few hours later, during a rampaging vampire assault—itself an unforeseen side effect of a revenge plot by the Duchess’s exiled twin sister Syanna gone disasterously wrong—the price to slack the vampire’s rage was Syanna herself. This ran counter to Anna Henrietta’s wishes, so Geralt left Syanna in her cell; he would not use anyone as a bargaining chit. Not unless the Duchess was cool with it, I guess.
But when—after the vampire was slain and Syanna questioned anew—a coup was uncovered with precious Anna Henrietta as its target, Geralt began to fret. He informed the captain of the guard that Syanna was not to be trusted, which prompted increased security around the beloved Duchess.
But then, a fatal miscalculation! Geralt tdecides to tells Anna Henrietta herself about her sister’s machinations. Whoops, Anna Henrietta reacts poorly; first denial, then anger, and finally a stubborn attempt to prove Geralt mistaken. Syanna is summoned, the Duchess’s extra guards are waved off, and Anna Henrietta embraces her sister in a moment of sororal forgiveness…which ends with Anna Henrietta on the receiving end of her aforementioned hairpin. Chekhov’s gun smokes again.
This ending sucks, because it isn’t what I wanted! But is really good, also, because tragedy propelled by kind intentions? That’s real storytelling, baby! I know there were pivot points; what if Geralt gave Syanna to the vampire so there was no one alive to regicide her? What if Geralt didn’t tell Anna Henrietta that her sister sucked, would she still so brazenly embrace her dubious prisoner? I really don’t know where I went “wrong,” but that hairpin foreshadow ten hours beforehand was a subtle touch that would have been lost to time if I ended up with the walkthrough-mandated happy ending. So stuff it with your “best” ending, internet. I simply do not know how to circle the square of narrative spoiler phobia; If I want to give up control of the narrative to the optimal path by pre-reading a website walkthrough, I might as well just watch a movie. But if someone posts all the critical story beats of a movie in advance, they’d be pilloried! Anna Henrietta’s dead, man. Sorry, that’s what happened! Romeo dies, Juliet dies, you can change it on your second playthrough but it’s still canon.
Ah, whoops, back to the intensely serious and moving text of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. This is exactly why I moved off of goodreads and onto my own website; You’re just looking for a reason to read this book, and you find eight thousand words on the Witcher III: Blood & Wine. Bet you didn’t expect that within the bounds of a book review. Ah, but if someone tells you to read a random review of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead because you liked The Witcher III: Wild Hunt I think you’d be mighty suspicious. The prosecution rests, your honor.
Ah, dang, but the book though. You want to see why I thought of it as magical realism? Take this doozy of a quote:
Just then I saw a fast and agile swarm of Fieldfares. These are Birds that I only ever see in a flock. The move nimbly, like one large piece of living fretwork in the air. I read somewhere that were a Predator to attack them, one of those languid Hawks that hover in the sky like the Holy Spirit, for instance, the Fieldfares will defend themselves. For as a flock they’re capable of fighting, in a very special, perfidious way, and also of taking revenge—they swiftly soar into the air, then in perfect unison they defecate on their oppressor—dozens of white droppings land on the predator’s lovely wings, soiling them, gluing them together, and coating the feathers in corrosive acid. This forces the Hawk to come to its senses, cease its pursuit and land on the grass in disgust. It may well die of revulsion, so badly polluted are its feathers. It spends the whole day cleaning them, and then the next day too. It doesn’t sleep, it cannot sleep with such dirty wings. It’s sicked by its own overwhelming stink. It’s like a Mouse, like a Frog, like carrion. It can’t remove the hardened excrement with its beak, it’s freezing cold, and now the rainwater can easily pervade its glued-up feathers to reach its fragile skin. Its own kind, other Hawks shun it too. It seems to them leprous, infected by a vile disease. Its majesty has been injured. All this is unbearable for the Hawk, and sometimes the Bird will die.
There’s no way you know what genre I pulled this from. It is a complete tale, could mean anything to any character, could be in any kind of novel. It is also supremely interesting and cool. Is this even fiction? Maybe it is real stuff, I don’t even know if Fieldfares are real birds, or no. Oh, okay, so the first google autofill suggestion for “fieldfare” is “fieldfare poop” so I feel pretty confident in that this is real stuff. All right, chalk one up to knowledge.
The book won awards.
Its cover is appealing.
I really liked it!
You already know too much about this book.
Go read it, and try to act surprised.