A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: Marina Lewycka (Penguin Essentials, 71)

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Have you ever had a conflict with a family member that you could not resolve without compromise, one profoundly rooted in the past? In a BBC Bookclub interview, the author mentioned that some reviewers of the Ukrainian translation were hostile, seeing it as an attack on their country.

Along with the old man's story, I gathered considerable knowledge on the history of tractors in Ukrainian, and also an inkling of its political situation.Flat, caricaturish characters, wooden dialogue interspersed with spoon-fed thoughts the main character has while talking, predictable plot arc, etc. I think I may have actually not enjoyed this book because, and I am going to level with people here, I am prejudiced against Ukrainians. Nikolai's reading of excerpts of the book is interspersed with the main narrative throughout the novel, which though informative, failed to meld with the main story.

Refugees after WWII, they were a typical family who must start over in modern England living out the immigrant experience. I don't usually like this kind of book, but I was totally hooked it kept me up at night a couple of times - it's that good. As a Pole I found the idea of hoisting a cooker onto a roof rack of a Rolls-Royce hilarious while realistic, after all I have myself been an enthusiastic participant in the process of loading an old Siemens washing machine onto a sailing yacht in Kiel, Germany circa 1984! The quick synopsis of the plot is this: Gold-digging Ukrainian immigrant hussy latches on to an elderly Ukrainian widower in England, marries him, and tries to take his money and his house.

But, just in case, I replied, with a couple of “trick” questions that only real relatives would know the answer to. Q. Your narrator Nadia struggles to understand Valentina, and to resist her worst impulses towards her. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. As the story rolls along she's forever nudging your ribs and smirking loudly and huff-huffing at the silly things her characters do. The roots of the story reach to the Revolution, the Ukrainian famine in the 30's and the WW2; the contemporary story moves swiftly and the tractors appear only infrequently as a historical metaphor.