book review a short history of tractors in ukrainian

The real merit of this book is its marriage of theme and plot. And, like too many exclamations, it can be tiring. Like an exclamation mark, there is a time and a place for this layout. Traditionally, this layout is used to indicate a change of viewpoint, but here it serves as a lever to heighten the importance of the bit before the break. Lewycka also has a habit of breaking her scenes into passages separated by blank lines. This pushes the story to the fore, but risks boredom and challenges the reader to find sympathy with the tedious narrator.

Lewycka, the author, is not afraid of cliché, both in character and plot, and her sentences are simple declarative machines that become progressively invisible. Soon Nadezdha and Vera are united in their struggle to evict, and deport, Valentina. They know that the chain-smoking Valentina is fishing for a passport. Nadezdha, our narrator, and her sister Vera are apoplectic. But before it does, the eighty-four-year-old Nikolai breaks under the pressure of Valentina’s “superior Botticellian breasts” and agrees to marry her. Meanwhile, Milla’s two daughters, Nadezdha and Vera, squabble over the division of her inheritance. Her husband, the wilful Nikolai develops an obsession with a beautiful Ukrainian immigrant called Valentina. In an allusion to the dying fingers of Soviet Russia – Mother Russia – the death of Milla leaves her family divided. Ludmilla, mother of the fifty-year-old narrator, Nadezdha, has recently died. At a guess, both feel an uncomfortable gap between their identity and their history. Her own story overlaps somewhat with the narrator of A Short History: both daughters of Ukrainian economic migrants who were railroaded, often literally, by the Second World War. Its author is Marina Lewycka, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. The cover is nicely east European: duotone block print. Helpfully, the book is subtitled “a novel”. The marketing executives at Viking must have tapped pens thoughtfully against teeth before agreeing to the title, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

Book review a short history of tractors in ukrainian