Olga Tokarczuk’s latest novel owes a debt to the great feminist horror writer Shirley Jackson.
“I write for intelligent people, not idiots.” Those of us who slogged our way through Olga Tokarczuk’s 1500-page magnum opus,, might well have patted ourselves on the back and haughtily taken the Nobel laureate’s words to heart. We had ascended the mountain and were ready to claim the crown.
In a rather Kafkaesque turn , the sanatorium is full, and so Wojnicz finds lodging at the Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a downtrodden hotel populated by an odd assortment of sanatorium rejects. Tokarczuk clearly revels in this pompous misogynist buffoonery, lampooning the kinds of ideas that were rife among the so-called intelligentsia of Mann’s time, and found particular currency with the dawn of psychoanalysis. It never feels mean-spirited, though, and, with the current state of the world, remains depressingly relevant.
Strange things have been happening in Gorbesdorf; things that Tokarczuk teases with ominous flashes. Dead toads. A decapitated duck, strung up like Mussolini from a baking ring. And, in the forest, life-sized female dummies called tutschi, made from sticks, moss and other rotting detritus. Used to relieve the sexual urges of the local villagers, they may well be the embodiment of malevolent spirits – the otherwise absent women, spurned as witches.
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