I have no idea what I was expecting from this book, but it sure wasn’t that!
I guess a part of me kind of thought that a book by a Nobel prize-winning author would be very serious and heavy. And that’s not to say that this book isn’t serious and heavy in places, but I was really surprised by how genuinely funny it was for most of the time. Janina, the narrator, is a weird as hell old woman living in the remote Polish woods–she studies astrology, translates poetry, cares deeply about animals, and gives largely unflattering nicknames to her neighbors. When a neighbor turns up dead and suspicions start to grow, Janina gets herself involved in the investigation, convinced she knows what’s going on.
There were a lot of parts of this book that made me laugh out loud. In fact, I’m going to quote one of them here because I liked it so much I screenshotted it to save on my phone and send to my dad:
It’s hard work talking to some people, most often males. I have a Theory about it. With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains. His capacity to read novels almost entirely vanishes; testosterone autism disturbs the character’s psychological understanding.
I think this quote really gives you a good snippet of Janina’s narrative voice, which is quirky but keenly observant and a little bit sardonic at times. (Of course, huge kudos to the translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who surely put in an enormous amount of work to capture the charm of the original Polish!) This is a book that is driven in equal parts by character and character relationship as it is by the actual mystery of the plot, but in the end those two things weave together into a really wonderfully satisfying conclusion.
Overall I found this book truly enjoyable and would strongly recommend giving it a shot!