Woman quite alone

When we read stories about older women, they are inevitably coping with family life. Their children have betrayed them, their lovers have left or died, their homes are falling apart. In Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, the woman is aloof, a bit hilarious, ready to plot and kill to save what she loves. We know her as neither vulnerable nor wise. Her fierce boldness makes for joyous reading.