by Olga Tokarczuk, 2019, Kindle Edition, Riverhead Books

The high school I attended has started a book club and this book was one of the monthly selections. It is about an older lady who lives by herself in Poland, very close to the Czech border. She looks after some neighboring summer homes when the owners are away for the winter and also has a contract with the local school to teach kids English.

The book is narrated in first person by the elderly lady. She describes some things that are happening in her area, particularly the strange deaths of some individuals who are either murdered or who have met their death under suspicious circumstances.

The book captures the personality of the person extremely well. The author is a much renowned author in Poland and, in fact she won the Nobel prize in literature.

While I enjoyed reading the thoughts and perspectives of this unusual person, I thought I would like the book more. For example, there are some long passages in the book about astology, which I didn’t find interesting at all. I think some of it was necessary to establish the personality of the person, but the volume of information on the subject was just too much.

The plot about the deaths of the four individuals is interesting, but there was nothing particularly outstaning about it. I do think the author’s portrayal of the primary character’s personality was well done, but I’m not sure the book was worhty of winiing the Nobel Prize.