Ten years later, a chance encounter brings Olivia back into contact with Rollo, sparking a rush of conflicting emotions – more specifically, the desire to open up vs the tendency towards self-protection. The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond LehmannĪ sequel to Lehmann’s earlier novel, Invitation to the Waltz, in which seventeen-year-old Olivia Curtis is captivated at her first society ball by the dashing Rollo Spencer. The eerie atmosphere and sense of isolation of the novel’s setting – a remote Polish village in winter – are beautifully evoked. By turns arresting, poetic, mournful, and blacky comic, Plow subverts the traditional expectations of the noir genre to create something genuinely thought-provoking and engaging. That might make Plow sound heavy or somewhat ponderous however, nothing could be further from the truth! This is a wonderfully accessible book, a metaphysical novel that explores some fascinating and important themes in a highly engaging way. It is by turns an existential murder mystery, a meditation on life in an isolated, rural community and, perhaps most importantly, an examination of our relationship with animals and their place in the hierarchy of society. Antonia Lloyd Jones)ĭrive Your Plow…, the 2009 novel by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, is quite a difficult one to describe. The book’s enigmatic ending only adds to its sense of mystery.ĭrive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (tr. Almost immediately, there is a certain frisson to the interactions between the two, a connection that waxes and wanes as the days slip by. Into her life comes Kerrand, a French graphic artist from Normandy whose speciality is creating comics. The narrator – a young woman who remains unnamed throughout – is something of a misfit in her community, her French-Korean origins marking her out as a source of speculation amongst the locals. Set out of season in a quiet seaside town close, Winter in Sokcho is a haunting yet captivating novella of great tenderness and beauty – a story encompassing themes of detachment, fleeting connections and the pressure to conform to society’s expectations. Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin (tr.