Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
by Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones
"With his help, the tree trunks revealed their secrets to me. The most ordinary stumps turned out to be entire kingdoms of Creatures that bored corridors, chambers, and passages, and laid their precious eggs there. The larvae may not have been beautiful, but I was moved by their sense of trust---they entrusted their lives to the trees, without imagining that these huge, immobile Creatures are essentially very fragile, and wholly dependent on the will of people too.... Boros scooped up the forest litter to show me other rare and less rare species: the Hermit Beetle, the Deathwatch Beetle---who'd have thought it was sitting here, under a flake of bark? The Golden Ground Beetle---ah, so that's what it's called; I had seen it so many times before, and always thought of it as shiny but nameless. The Clown Beetle, like a lovely drop of mercury. The Lesser Stag Beetle. The names of Insects should be given to children.... Boros's hands did conjuring tricks, drew mysterious signs, and lo and behold, an Insect appeared, a larva, or some tiny eggs laid in a cluster."
I'm torn; very nice language, captures some Feelings, but it was also work to read and I'm so tired lately.