this page is a work in progress
I will try to write book reviews; they will have spoilers but only below the "SPOILERS BELOW" portion
This book hooked me from its first sentence: "I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed be an ambulance in the Night." Though, to be honest, the title is also dope as fuck, so it might have started to hook me even before the first sentence.
The main character and narrator is an old Polish woman named Janina Duszejko who lives in a small village in Poland. The book was in fact translated from the Polish original, and I don't know if it's because it's a translation or because the author is very good at writing characters (I suspect it's the latter) that Mrs. Duszejko has an voice which is unlike any other I have read, and it is very compelling. She is hopelessly dependent astrology to the point that she has a reputation for being a crazy old lady, has incredibly strange habits partly because of the astrology beliefs (e.g. the feet washing thing), is fond of capitalizing Random Words like her Ailments, and empathizes deeply with animals. The townspeople's fondness for hunting, in particular, is where you see her really go crazy and act out, and it's very much a character-defining thing to see how she handles these situations. We're all most interesting in our failings, at least in my opinion.
Overall, it ends up being a quite good murder mystery and does a good job exploring our relationship with nature, but I really liked it for two reasons: one is of course the voice of Janina, and the other is in the spoiler section. She's also got a pretty solid sense of humor, so that helps pull you in to her, even when you're likely to disagree with her on most things. That's a large part of the joy of reading fiction, I think - it forces you to empathize with those who you just know are crazy, and then you have to question your own beliefs.
SPOILERS BELOW
Okay, the other reason is that it's an unreliable narrator novel. I fucking love unreliable narrators. They're so good. They're the best. My favorite one was (TODO SPOILER THIS TOO) Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. That's a book where you read 300 pages all well and good and then you read the last 10 pages and you're like "what the hell, the last 150 pages were full of lies? I have to go read it again?" So you end up getting two reading experiences - one where you're fooled and one where you're not. It reminds me of palindrome poems, for example Doppelganger by J A Lindon. Janina was less slick about it; I remember suspecting her from about halfway through the book, but it really was a pleasure to see it come together.
Also, she has this wonderful obsession with translating the poetry of William Blake. I maybe should put more thought into why this was written in, but I really enjoy it. I learned about William Blake because of his prints, specifically The Ancient of Days (which appeared in the series Interface by U M A M I and is how I discovered it), so it was pretty cool to realize that he also wrote poetry. I ended up buying Blake's America: A Prophecy and Europe: A Prophecy after that.
I was surprised that it actually won the Nobel Prize, presumably for the animal-rights themes and messages. That aspect of the story felt a bit flat and underdeveloped - I wasn't able to find much nuance there other than "hunting bad". Especially in the church where Janina makes a scene and gets herself fired, it felt a bit forced. But on the question of what one should do about causes one cares for, it has a lot more to think about. Janina takes one, arguably extreme, approach, but since her fate doesn't exactly reward her for that, we get to ask what she should have done, especially given her past struggles and the prejudices she faces. I don't have an answer, but there's some tragic (?) ideal to be inspired towards that's difficult to put in words - not just "go to the necessary lengths to fight for what you care for, even it's extreme" or "never give up", but something more like a commentary on stubbornness and sacrifice.
