Books
by Marina Lewycka
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A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian |
What do you do when your recently widowed 84 year old, Ukrainian Dad - who happens to be writing a history of tractors - falls in love with a voluptuous, gold-digger, half his age, who is intent on getting a foothold in the West, no matter what it costs? Well, you close ranks even though you and your sister have been feuding for years. A wonderfully comic and perceptive novel, with acutely observed characters.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 31 September 2005) |
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Two Caravans |
Lewycka's History of Tractors in Ukrainian (bwl 31) is a hard act to follow but she does well. The caravans, one for women one for men, stand in a strawberry field in Kent, the story revolving round the immigrant workers who inhabit them. Funny (you'll never eat a battery chicken again), sad and closer to reality than Tremaine's The Road Home (bwl 47), this is a wonderfully affectionate account of 'foreignness', not to mention the delicious love story . . .
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 48 November 2008) |
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Various Pets Alive & Dead |
Back on track after the disappointing We Are All Made of Glue? Almost. This tale of children brought up in a left-wing commune is a deft commentary on the generation gap in a society of collapsed ideals. How can Serge betray his parents' principles and go into the City (without telling them)? And Clara, into conventional neat-and-tidiness after childhood's above-such-things messiness? Will their parents forgive them and mellow? Perceptive, witty and lots of fun.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 65 Summer 2012) |
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We are Made of Glue |
For those who have read Two Caravans (bwl 48) and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (bwl 31), it won't come as a surprise that this title is misleadingly frivolous. A clever, touching story, extremely funny, extremely dark, so humane, with great understanding of madly human quirks, with as usual a marvellous ear and subtle pen for the different foreign accents, this author, born in Germany but bred in England and writing superb English, deserves all her fame and more.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton - bwl 81 Summer 2016) |
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