The narrator, Janina Duszejko, introduces herself in the opening
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 by an ambulance in the Night.” She lives in an isolated village on the
Czech-Polish border and devotes her time to studying astrology and translating
William Blake. One by one, men in the
area are found murdered. Since the
victims are all hunters, Janina concludes that animals are responsible for the
deaths. Of course, this theory results
in her being scorned and dismissed by virtually everyone.
Part of the appeal of the book is the quirky narrator. She prefers to use nicknames rather than
people’s actual names and she prefers animals to people. Though she knows that she lacks any real
power and that people are laughing at her, she refuses to be dismissed as a
silly old woman and continues to rail against injustices. She suffers from an unidentified chronic
illness and bouts of crying; the latter seem to indicate how deeply troubled
she is about the world.
Janina is very attuned to nature.
When she comes across a familiar fox, she speaks of “seeing an old
friend” and she refers to deer as “Young Ladies” and calls her dogs her “Little
Girls”. When it rains she describes
hearing “the rustle of grass growing, the ivy climbing up the walls, and the mushroom
spore expanding underground. After the
rain, when the Sun breaks through the clouds for a while, everything takes on
such depth that one’s eyes are filled with tears.” Interestingly, each chapter begins with a
quote from William Blake whose poetry emphasizes the importance of being close
to the natural world. For example, “A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate/Predicts
the ruin of the State” and “A Skylark
wounded in the wing,/A Cherubim does cease to sing” and “A Robin Red breast in a Cage/Puts all Heaven
in a Rage” are three such quotations used.
Janina equates animal killings and the murder of humans. She wishes she could write warnings in animal
script: “[people] won’t take pity on your
poor souls, for they say you haven’t got souls.
They don’t see their brethren in you, they won’t give you their blessing. The nastiest criminal has a soul, but not
you, beautiful Deer, nor you, Boar, nor you, wild Goose, nor you Pig, nor you,
Dog.” She asks, “What sort of world is
this? Somebody’s body is made into
shoes, into meatballs, sausages, a bedside rug, someone’s bones are boiled to
make broth . . . Shoes, sofas, a shoulder bag made of someone’s belly, keeping
warm with someone else’s fur, eating someone’s body, cutting it into bits and
frying it in oil . . . This mass killing, cruel, impassive, automatic, without
any pangs of conscience, without the slightest pause for thought, though plenty
of thought is applied to ingenious philosophies and theologies. What sort of a world is this, where killing and
pain are the norm? What on earth is
wrong with us?”
The novel also examines how women and the old are marginalized and
disregarded. She knows she is seen as a little
old lady, a silly old bag, a crazy old crone and a madwoman. She hears people “snorting with laughter” at
her and not taking her seriously, especially because she is a woman; when she
has a conversation with a man, she knows that if she shared his gender “he’d
have heard me out, considered his arguments and debated the matter. But to him I was just an old woman, gone off
her rocker living in this wilderness.
Useless and unimportant.”
Though serious in subject matter, the book also has humour. I loved Janina’s theory of testosterone
autism: “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.”
One element that did annoy me is the extended passages on astrology. They slow down the pace and diminish the
suspense. Since I don’t believe in
astrology, I tended to skim those sections, but perhaps that’s an example of
how we tend to tune out people, like Janina, whose ideas are
unconventional.
I understand why the author is a rather controversial figure in her
home country of Poland. She does not
stint on criticizing its culture and religion.
At one point she rants, “people in our country don’t have the ability to
club together to form a community . . . This is a land of neurotic egotists, each
of whom, as soon as he finds himself among others, starts to instruct,
criticize, offend, and show off his undoubted superiority.”
For a thriller, this book is slow-paced and not particularly
suspenseful so it is not recommended to anyone looking for a quick,
action-packed read. What it does have is
a lot of ideas which are perhaps outside the parameters of conventional
thinking but ideas that nonetheless should be given some consideration.
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