レビュー要約

• 奇抜な語り手と哲学的な推理小説の融合が支持されている。動物倫理や占星術への傾斜は読者を選ぶが、その偏りが作品独自の怒りとユーモアを生んでいる。

レビュー

• じわりと味が出てくる

  森の脇にいくつも別荘があるが冬のあいだは空き家となるチェコ国境のポーランド片田舎。そこに棲みつき空別荘の面倒をみている初老の女性ジャニーナは体調不良をかばいつつ星占いに凝り、森の動物たちをこよなく愛し、そのためハンターを憎み、そしてウイリアム・ブレイクの詩にどっぷり浸かる 人目には狷介とみえるも至極真面目に生きている。静けさを破って男たちが一人また一人奇怪な死を遂げ、警察は事故死と判断するが ジャニーナは近くにある鹿や狐の痕跡と当人たちの星座から「絶対に動物の復讐だ！」と再三にわたり長い手紙を警察に出し、周囲から「厄介な人物」と迷惑がられている。元エンジニアで理屈っぽいジャニーナの一人称で紡ぐ話だが毎日の出来事にあわせて独断的な星座のチェックにブレイクの詩が絡み合い、通読したときは「なんだかなあ・・」という感じだったが、外国の書評子たち（Goodreads）がとんでもない長さで蘊蓄を傾けているのを読み、「せっかくのノーベル賞作家の本だし」と「ブレイク詩集（岩波文庫）」を求めた。なるほどタイトルがこれか “地獄の格言：死者の骨の上に汝の荷車を駆り、汝の鋤をとおせ（松島正一訳）” （ブレイクの詩は古い時代を反映していて 凡人にはどれも松島氏の注釈がないとよって立つ意味がわからない。）それにしても本誌全編に散りばめてある詩の各片が結構な意味を持つかも、で、もう一度始めから読み直した。やっぱり普段読んでいる直球勝負のミステリ小説ではなかった。余韻たっぷりながら少々満腹気味。 文中所々で普通名詞が大文字で始まっており首を傾げていたが上記松島氏の解説ではブレイク時代はそういう書き方があったそうで 作者もそれに倣って言葉を強調しているのだろうか。

• ハードボイルド老婆

  前作『逃亡派』から一転して、ポーランドの超ローカルな世界が描かれ、 『昼の家、夜の家』に出てくるご近所さんの一風変わった老女マルタが 今回は主人公兼語り手になったような話だが、一種の推理小説であり、 叙述トリック的なものが仕掛けられてもいるので、英訳では注意深く 読まないとややわかりにくいと感じる部分があるかもしれない。 なお、「狩猟者に死を」はベジである著者自身の主張でもあろうが、 それがややストレートに出過ぎているような印象もなくはなかった。 ここはあまり詳しく書くとネタバレになってしまうので、これ以上は 書けないのが辛いところだが……ｗ

• This book might be categorized as a "mystery," because there are murders which are solved at the end. But what draws the reader in is the twisted mind of the narrator -- a recluse who believes in astrology and loves animals and does good things for strange reasons. In fact, it wasn't until the very end that I realized that it was a mystery. Each chapter begins with a quote from William Blake, and the title is a quote from his "Proverbs of Hell": "In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. The cut worm forgives the plow. Dip him in the river who loves water. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star. Eternity is in love with the productions of time." Like Blake, this author is both enigmatic and insightful. Passages that caught my eye: "It is in the feet that all knowledge of Mankind lies hidden; the body sends them a weighty sense of who we really are and how we relate to the earth." p. 10 "I believe each of us sees the other Person in our own way, so we should give them the name we consider suitable and fitting. Thus, we are polyonymous." p. 19 "I have never believed in any personalized distribution of eternal Light." p. 39 "As I gazed at the black-and-white landscape of the Plateau, I realized that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. it lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence." p. 47 "Fancy being given a body and not knowing anything about it. There's no instruction manual." p. 83 "Sometimes I think that only the sick are truly healthy." p. 84 "There's nothing natural about nature anymore...It's too late. The natural processes have gone wrong, and now we must keep it all in control to make sure there's no catastrophe." p. 195 "... sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other." p. 224 "... my belief that the human psyche evolved n order to defend us against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system -- it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous." p. 225 "The fact that we don't know hat's going to happen in the future is a terrible mistake in the programming of the world. It should be fixed at the first opportunity." p. 271

• This darkly feminist comedy is a disturbing murder mystery, an ode to William Blake, and a call to respect nature. The story centres around a woman in her sixties, Janina, an eccentric vegetarian and part recluse, who is hopelessly out of touch with the thinking around her in her small Polish village, where she sometimes teaches English She hates the hypocrisy of traditional religion, the superiority of humans and what they regard as their right to exploit other species. She explores the themes of the value of all life, and specifically those of her two dogs who have gone missing. She raises some uncomfortable questions on why the killing of a deer is regarded as "sport" and the killing of a human as "murder" and makes no secret of the way she thinks or of her preference for the company of animals as opposed to that of humans, basing some of her assumptions on astrology. The book is thought provoking, well written, and a brilliant read! It will make you sit up and think....and think again. I loved it!

• I gave it to all my friends and family for Christmas. Je l'ai offert à tous mes amis pour Noël. In livre exceptionnel et inattendu, à lire absolument.

• I simply loved It! I sympatize with the author's ideas and love her style. I also appreciated the translator's work. It's definitely the best book I read this year and I will certainly books of this author.

• This is a book for those who love the way books are written as much as they love the stories they tell. Credit goes both to Olga Tokarczuk, who has written one of the most peculiar and intriguing characters I've ever encountered in a book.... alongside her translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who managed to capture the essence of unlikely metaphor and unexpected references her main character espouses. The book has a kind of spiritual theory that will not be for everyone, but I was entranced by it.

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