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

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Meanwhile, fired up by passion, Nikolai is writing his own eccentric contribution to human knowledge, a history of tractors, through which

Er. Uh. Just... Babi Yar. Really. Next time let's find a Polish book talking about the virgin forests of Auschwitz. listening to people who talk like this or did this voice come naturally to you? Do you have favorite phrases, or ones that you yourself use in your there was a whole community of tractor enthusiasts out there, willing and eager to share their technical knowledge. What was more difficult was Valentina is by no means lazy. She works very hard every day, illegally of course, in an old people's home, and she spends most of her nights with another Englishman. Thus we have a picture of an assiduous but utterly evil woman. The only people capable of opposing this evil are two other women who have Ukrainian blood in their veins: Nikolai's daughters, who have long since become law-abiding British citizens. Despite the best efforts of the two sisters, their father marries the young blonde.Some readers really disliked this one, claiming the characters are insufferable. I can see why it might seem so in print, but in the audiobook they were quite well-defined (quibble though that Vera and Valentina were kind of similar sounding names, so I got them a bit confused at times). Since we see the action through the point-of-view of the younger daughter Nadia, naturally we're going to find the sister she dislikes (or at least resents) offputting; at least until the full story comes out later in the book. Nadia is a bit of a put-upon mouse at first, but comes into her own as well. Valentina may be scheming and materialistic, but a golden opportunity was thrust at her, so no surprise she took it! Their father did, indeed, put himself into the mess, but he did so much for the family over the years (as becomes evident later), that I could forgive him a well-intentioned idea ("rescuing" a Ukrainian woman and her son) gone horribly wrong. The book's not perfect - for one thing, I found the War years details clunkily done, awkward to get through. No spoiler, but the later developments were a bit much also: one key player comes to England as part of a long-term conference/training scheme ... yet speaks no English! Still, the farce helps balance out the more serious details of the family's painful past. That's what he is writing, a short history of tractors. In Ukrainian. Eighty-four years old, an engineer, a chess player and a father of two daughters, he had been recently widowed. Now he decides to marry a 36-year-old blonde Ukrainian divorcee with a teenage son and a pair of superior breasts. He knows that she wants to marry him only for his money and so that she and her son can make permanent their stay in England (where he and his family had migrated a long time ago) but he looks at her golden hair, charming eyes, curves and jiggling breasts and say "so what?" His two grownup daughters, born ten years apart, and have been feuding ever since, have temporarily united against this common enemy aptly named Valentina.

As the novel opens, eighty-four-year-old Nikolai tells his daughters that he has fallen in love and is going to get married. The object of his affection is Valentina, an illegal immigrant from Ukraine whose main appeal appears to be her youth (she is thirty-six years old), her dyed-blonde hair, and her enormous, voluptuous breasts. Your narrator Nadia struggles to understand Valentina, and to resist her worst impulses towards her. Was it hard to find the right tone Sadly, some of the deeper meaning is inevitably lost, falling victim to the comedy situations and emotional development, so that the conclusion is something of an anti-climax. I also felt that the narrator’s character remained something of a mystery to me, despite her revealing her family’s secrets she didn’t really share too much of her own feelings.

The sisters are horrified. It seems completely clear to them that Valentina is just using their father to stay in the UK, and they are scandalized that all it took to bamboozle their supposedly brilliant father are some satin green underwear and a pretended knowledge of Nietzsche. However, we soon learn that while Valentina is indeed an opportunist, everything she does is for her son Stanislav, whose high IQ wasn’t well served in Ukrainian schools. Overall, this book gets a solid 3.5 star rating from me. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked the story, but could not overlook the writing flaws. However, I really like Lewytska's narrative voice, and I will definitely be on the lookout for her other works. As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families."

Vera and Nadia decide to let go of, and which begin to seem less important? Have you ever had a conflict with a family member that you could There will be no problems, says Pappa. He has anticipated all problems. He has known her for three months. She has an uncle in Selby, and has come to visit him on a tourist visa. She wants to make a new life for herself and her son in the West, a good life, with good job, good money, nice car - abso lutely no Lada no Skoda - good education for son - must be Oxford Cambridge, nothing less. She is an educated woman, by the way. Has a diploma in pharmacy. She will easily find well-paid work here, once she learns English. In the meantime, he is helping her with her English, and she is cleaning the house and looking after him. She sits on his lap and allows him to fondle her breasts. They are happy together.This book had so much going for it. First: a quirky title. Second: crazy Ukrainian immigrants. Third: a love story involving horny old people. And it managed to fail miserably on all three counts. her and why? What are some of the explanations that minor characters give for her behavior? Locate points in the book where people other than Nadia,

The characters are Ukrainian and living in England, but don't expect to learn much about what that means for them. There's a lot of family drama, elder abuse, and not much characterization. The first person narrator, the old man's adult daughter, is practically see-through she's so flimsy. It's obvious she's just an excuse to tell her father's story and not an actual person in her own right. For example, the eighty-four-year-old Nikolai, a former engineer with seventeen patents and intellectual interests, has apparently been watching too much television and has bought into the flesh market of the sexual revolution. As he says, “Snag is, hydraulic lift no longer fully functioning. But maybe with Valentina . . . ” He is transfixed by Valentina’s breasts, which she lets him fondle (though later she will not let her new baby breast-feed). If his hydraulic lift malfunctions, Valentina says, “Squishy squashy husband want make oralsex.” Oral sex is recommended by Mrs. Zadchuk, Valentina’s friend, as a legally binding way of consummating the marriage. According to Mrs. Zadchuk, oral sex is all the rage in England and in all the newspapers. Nadezhda (Nadia for short) and her Big Sis, Vera, lost their mother two years ago and have been fighting ever since over the will. Now they are brought together by a common goal: to prevent their 84 year old father, Nikolai, from marrying a Ukrainian gold digger with big boobs. Their words, not mine. Nadia's story is interspersed with excerpts from her father's work on tractors (he was an engineer), and the tale of her grandparents, parents, the war and how they came to be in England.

member who seemed to be entering into such a flawed allegiance? How far would you go to stop such a wedding? Do you think that Nadia Oh really? How do you know this, Nadezhda? My writer's group would have taken me to task if I had presented them with this. The other no-no that the author does is to somehow allow her lead first-person narrator to know what someone else is thinking. This is after the old man's young wife is treating him particularly bad: