A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: A Novel [Hardcover]

Marina Lewycka (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2005

When their recently widowed father announces that he plans to remarry, sisters Vera and Nadezhda realize that they must learn to put aside a lifetime of bitter rivalry in order to save him. The new woman in his life is Valentina, a voluptuous gold-digger from Ukraine, fifty years his junior, with fabulous breasts and a proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, who will stop at nothing in her single-minded pursuit of the luxurious Western lifestyle she dreams of. But separating their addled and annoyingly lecherous dad from his new love will prove to be no easy feat-in terms of sheer cold-eyed ruthlessness, the two sisters swiftly realize that they are rank amateurs. As Hurricane Valentina turns the old family house upside down, all the old secrets come falling out, including the most deeply buried one of them all, from the war, the one that explains much about why Nadezhda and Vera are so different. In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their father carries on with the great work of his dotage-a grand history of the tractor and its role in human progress, giving due credit to the crucial Ukrainian contribution. The story carries us back to prerevolutionary Ukraine, through wartime Germany, to contemporary England, taking in love and suffering, tanks and tractors, bitchiness, sibling rivalry, and, above all, the joys of growing old disgracefully.

A funny, enchanting novel about the belated healing of old family wounds under the most unlikely of circumstances and the trials and consolations of old age, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian manages both to transport us somewhere entirely fresh and to echo what we ourselves know in our hearts about how families work (and don't). Written with great and well-earned wit, empathy and grace, it is a debut worthy of full-throated celebration.

A wise, tender, deeply funny novel about an eccentric elderly Ukrainian widower in England and the struggles of his two feuding daughters to thwart the voluptuous young gold-digger from the old country who sweeps him off his feet

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The premise of Lewycka's debut novel is classic Viagra comedy: a middle-aged professor's aging and widowed father announces he intends to marry a blonde, big-breasted 30-something woman he has met at the local Ukrainian Social Club in the English town where he lives, north of London. It is clear to Nadezhda and her sister, Vera, that the femme fatale Valentina is only after Western luxuries—certainly not genuine love of any kind. Smitten with the ambitious hussy, their father forges ahead to help Valentina settle in England, spending what little pension he has buying her cars and household appliances and even financing her cosmetic surgery. In the meantime, Nadezhda, a socialist, and Vera, a proud capitalist, confront the longstanding ill will between them as they try to save their father from his folly. Predictable and sometimes repetitive hilarity ensues. But then Lewycka's comic narrative changes tone. Nadezhda, who has never known much about her parents' history, pieces it together with her sister and learns that there is more to her cartoonish father than she once believed. "I had thought this story was going to be a knockabout farce, but now I see it is developing into a knockabout tragedy," Nadezhda says at one point, and though she is referring to Valentina, she might also be describing this unusual and poignant novel.
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From The New Yorker

In this comic first novel, two estranged sisters living in England discover that their addled elderly father, a Ukrainian war refugee and expert on tractors, is planning to marry a young, enormous-breasted woman who sees his modest pension as her ticket to capitalist comfort. The sisters put aside their differences, and embark on a spirited campaign to save him from boil-in-the-bag dinners, slovenly housekeeping, and such extravagant purchases as a broken-down Rolls-Royce. In the midst of these machinations—which include long-winded letters to solicitors, venomous gossip, and all-out spying—Lewycka stealthily reveals how the depredations of the past century dictate what a family can bear.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First edition. edition (March 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594200440
• ISBN-13: 978-1594200441
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars UKRAINIAN TRACTORS: It Had Me From Hello!, March 25, 2005

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: A Novel (Hardcover)

I picked up Marina Lewycka's "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" almost by accident. The title attracted my attention so I picked it up and began reading. After reading the first three sentences, I was sold. They are: "Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside." The concern I have with books that begin so well is the difficulty the remainder has in living up to such promise. I am happy to report that Ukrainian Tractors lived up to the promise of its opening paragraph.

The opening sentences sum up the story. Nikolai, his wife and two children Vera and Nadezhda (Nadia) were Ukrainian refugees who, at the conclusion of the Second World War make their way to Peterborough, England. Vera was born before the war and has memories of the families' travails in German work camps. She is the "war baby." Vera is the basic domineering know-it-all older sister. Nadia is the peace baby, a liberal sociology lecturer with a penchant for buying her clothes used at the local Oxfam (charity outlet). Nadia and Vera have not talked since their mother's funeral. Nikolai picks up he phone one day and announces to Nadia that he is about to take a new bride. Valentina is a young, buxom bottle-blonde Ukrainian whose U.K. residency visa is about to expire. As expected, Vera and Nadia call a truce in order to prevent the marriage and protect their father from a fate they consider worse than death. Nikolai, of course, cannot help but contemplate blissful evenings in the warm embrace of his well-endowed faux-blonde soon to be illegal alien while he writes his book, a history of the tractor, the farm implement that changed the world.

Valentina makes for a worthy adversary and seems to best Vera and Nadia every step of the way. The comedy of the book turns a bit dark, however, as Nikolai's age and infirmities facilitate Valentina's increasing dominance over him. Her mental and physical abuse of Nikolai becomes apparent. At the same time, Lewycka takes us on a trip through the family's past. In the meantime, family ghosts and secrets begin to emerge. Root causes of the family's deep-rooted antagonism begin to reveal themselves as the story progresses. Events race on to a not altogether surprising conclusion.

I very much enjoyed "A Short History of tractors In Ukrainian". I was impressed by the manner in which Lewycka fleshed out the characters. Anyone who has been responsible for the care and feeding of an aging parent or grandparent will recognize Nikolai. One's pride is the last thing to go sometimes and when we see events beat the pride out of our loved ones we can almost see them shrink before our eyes. The two sisters also had a strong air of reality about them. I've seen each type in real life and I think Lewycka captures their essences well. Last but not least we have the Ukrainian bombshell, Valentina. By the end of the book I had no small amount of sympathy for Valentina. I could admire her work effort and her desire to make a better life for herself and her son despite her poor treatment of Nikolai. This is no easy task for a writer to accomplish. At the same time, her grasping nature, her dolled-up appearance, and her belief that ready-made food products were the western equivalent of high cuisine were downright hilarious at times.

There were a couple of spots where I thought the story dragged a bit or where some of the actions of the characters did not quite ring true. Some of the subsidiary characters seems a bit lifeless compared to Valentina and Nikolai. However, those relatively minor flaws were swept up in a story that was both charming and thoughtful.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem of a Novel, June 27, 2006

By 

dephal (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian : A Novel (Hardcover)

This isn't a particularly long novel, yet Lewycka manages to accomplish so much! The story-line itself is simple: two estranged sisters in England try to stop their aged father's marriage to a gold-digging Ukrainian woman. But the book itself is complex. It's one of the funniest books I've read in a long time, and there is joy, and yet there is also plenty of tragedy and grief. All of the characters are wonderful; even some of the minor supporting characters are fully realized people. And none of the characters are fully good or bad. The author even had me sympathizing at times with the gold-digger and the men with whom she had affairs. I think the book's greatest asset, however, is that it shows genuine insight into real families, and the sorts of complicated stories that families make for themselves. How many books can make you laugh, make you cry, and teach you about the history of tractors and the Ukraine, all in less than 300 pages?

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ties that bind, May 3, 2007

By 

Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Mass Market Paperback)

Rumours have it that Marina Lewycka's first novel was initially placed under "agriculture" on the book shelves. Ukrainian tractors don't sound like a good topic for a highly enjoyable reading experience. Yet it is! While a history of tractors features in the narrative as a sub-stream, the story really is about family - history and complex relationships across generations and cultures. All those elements are packaged in a vivid, yet easy-going language, filled with humour and gentle satire.

The story is set in the Ukrainian immigrant community in England and centres around Nicolai, a 84 year old widower who has set his eyes on a thirty-something, full-bosomed blonde Valentina, a would-like-to-be immigrant. His intention to marry her gets his two daughters onto the scene, anxious to stop such a mismatch. Despite their intense efforts and intrigues, however, their attempt to obstruct doesn't succeed. "She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade..." Written from the perspective of Nadia, the younger of the two daughters, and through her discussions with "Big Sis" Vera, the reader follows the upheavals that this new reality in their fathers' life creates. Suspicions are rife that Valentina has plans beyond looking after a new husband and that Nicolai is being exploited in more ways than one. The sisters themselves carry baggage from the past that they need to put aside or resolve in order to show a united front to their father's situation. In the process, events from the family history come to light that explain to some degree their different approaches to the problem at hand and different relationship each has had with their father and their late mother.

At one level Lewycka's novel is just a fun read, a family saga that shines with lively dialogue and witty comments on the reality of the lives of the central characters. At another level, she seamlessly integrates her reflections on aging and the needs and vulnerabilities of seniors and the challenges these present for the next generation to handle. Finally, through flashbacks into Nikolai's life, the author provides the reader with insights into the family's background that makes the characters into who they have become. Nicolai and Valentina in particular come to live in the story and one can find parallels to people we all know. All the parts are expertly joined so that these elements don't feel like overwhelming the primary storyline. A highly recommended book. [Friederike Knabe]