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It is the first novel I’ve read by Olga Tokarzchuk and I’ve read it in Ukrainian - the closest to the original Polish from the languages I know.

So-called ironic detectives were very popular in Eastern Europe in the 90s. It was sort of sub-genre normally written by a woman with a female protagonist investigating a certain mystery. But the main feature in those books was their ability to make you laugh out loud and their reading accessibility. I remember my favourite books from this genre were by a Polish writer Joanna Chmielewska.

I think what Tokarzchuk is doing in this novel is taking the form and using it for more profound purpose: dealing with the serious issues which affect us all but ensuring she reaches a wider audience.

The main character and the one who tells the story is a middle-aged eccentric, but instantly likable lady Yanina Duzheyko. She is retired English teacher leaving in a small village in a very picturesque part of Poland on the border with Chezch republic. She lives alone but she has got a small number of friends who are very distinctive people struggling to fit into society or comply with prevailing social norms. But i would not call them misfits - they are just little different, have a tender and unprotected souls. For example, Dionisiy, her former pupil and now grown up man, who works for the local police’s IT dept, but spends his free time translating William Blake. And Yanina helps him at that�� In parallel with these idealistic surroundings and pastimes, a series of murders start to happen��

But if you look for a thrilling mystery, i do not think it is the main point here. It is more about one person rebellation against the existing world order. It is about challenging the superiority of people above other creatures. It is about our place as a human beings in the world. In a strange way it reminded me The Vegetarian. The style and the way how story is told could not be more different. But the pathos and the values of these two books are certainly shared. This zeitgeist of ecology as vehicle for reconsidering our place in the world is certainly penetrating the literature internationally. There is another recent novel The Overstory by Richard Powers which apparently talks about the power of trees. (I have not read it yet).

Another theme is indoctrination of young children into some powerful ideology. It’s used to be communism, now it’s Catholicism in Poland. The novel depicts it in a quite scary way. Overall, the novel takes clear anticlerical stand. I could see how the author could anger the church: she compiles the speech by a cleric in the novel (quite off-putting) from the real speeches of this sort.

I do not know why people mention magic realism. I have not notice any magic realism. There are certainly some elements of mysticism with Yanina’s trust in astrology for example. It is a typical eastern european, erudite and poignant little novel which effortlessly mixes Blake, astrology, entomology and many other things; it talks about very serious issues, but does it in a accessible way.

Some quotes:

“All complicated human psyche has developed in order not to let a human being to comprehend what she sees in reality��

“Each thing one can believe in is the certain image of reality��

“People could understand only what they imagine themselves.��