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Oct 27, 2020wyenotgo rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Right from the opening paragraph, we know we’re in the presence of a remarkable protagonist, someone unblinkingly earthbound: "I am already at an age and in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the night." But in the very next sentence, she launches into the realm of astrology! Egad! Are we dealing with an unreliable narrator? It may take some time to find out. (No spoilers here.) She refuses to be addressed by the given name that she detests and she assigns each person she encounters an epithet that aligns with their appearance, personality or behavior. Tokarczuk thereby allows each of her characters to become what they’re intended to be. (In the past, some societies, including several aboriginal peoples of the Americas understood this notion and their children only acquired their names once their character emerged.) It’s worth noting that the protagonist has not found it possible to assign a suitable epithet to herself (she considers Medea as a possibility — there may be a clue there) and her creator doesn’t seem compelled to help. She is simultaneously a gentle soul and an angry one, deeply disturbed by the ill-treatment and deaths of living creatures around her. She is a caretaker, looking after the vacant summer homes of her town-dwelling neighbors over the winter. The role of caretaker is deeply embedded in her personality; her previous lives as a civil engineer and a teacher seem like far-off echoes of her true existence. As an astrologer, she sees herself and all mankind as hapless wanderers in the universe, beset by cosmic forces that she struggles to comprehend. She is well aware that the villagers regard her as a batty old woman of no consequence. The book is replete with pithy quotes. Of a writer, she says: "In a way, people like her, who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind — that such a person is not him- or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality — its inexpressibility." She is a person organically attuned to the natural world around her and she senses its moods: "We felt as if the sky had sunk very low over the earth, and hadn’t left much space or much air for living creatures to survive. Low, dark clouds had been scudding across the sky all day, and now, late in the evening, they were rubbing their wet bellies against the hills." Her observation of the process whereby people who have moved away gradually fade from our daily reality is especially apt: "I calmly watched as the image of Boros Sznajder, entomologist and taphonomist, faded and evaporated, until all that was left of him was a little gray pigtail hanging in midair, ridiculous." Reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s account of the slow disappearance of the Cheshire Cat! Marching along throughout the narrative is the looming presence of William Blake, clearly the most compelling inspiration for the book. Blake’s symbolism, his iconic wordcraft and his fascination with the subtle menace of the natural world invoke a mood of not-quite reality. This is a great deal more than an everyday murder mystery. For once, the Booker Prize people got it right this time.