A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Marina Lewycka (Author) "Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcee..." (more)
Key Phrases: portable photocopier, red plough, crap car, War Baby, Big Sis, Eric Pike (more...)

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, First Printing 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 (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #191,082 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not a Comedy, June 26, 2006

By	David H. Peterzell "Ph.D., Ph.D." (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Paperback)

I'm not sure why people label this book a "comedy." It most certainly is not. The elements of humor help the reader absorb the enormous amount of pain contained within. I suppose it is possible to skim the surface and laugh at the dark humor, but the book is much deeper than that. The book captures the pain of difficult old people and their frustrated relatives; the pain of immigrants assimilating into the host culture (or not); the pain of families that hold secrets and experience trauma; the pain of the desperate, weak and old; the pain of sibling, gender and cross-generational rivalries; the pain of idealism crashing against the rocks; the pain of caring and good intentions turning sour; the pain of being duped; the pain of sacrifice; the pain of surviving; the pain of being manipulated by "caring" people who turn out to be greedy, deceptive and corrupt; the pain of death, loss and grief. The book is brilliant for its ability to deliver sugar-coated bitter pills. The book is all about pain. The humor provides a backdrop for deeper, colder, more painful truths. Although humor may transform the pain into something stronger, the book is still about pain.

The story is clearly a personal one for the author, and yet the novel is full of portraits of people whom we feel like we "know." There is the idealistic and accomplished narrator, who is dismissed and misunderstood by her own family (as well as herself, sometimes). There is the naïve, needy and helpless person (in this case, the father), whose self-absorbed, spineless, self-indulgent and deranged behaviors cause one problem after another. There is the greedy, scamming, hateful Valentina, a blonde immigrant who is a ruthless and sometimes persuasive predator, and who is desperate for a better life for herself and her child. Feeling sympathetic towards her comes at a price! And there is the long suffering parent (in this case, the deceased mother, who looms large despite being dead) who was the glue that held all the pieces together. She is conspicuous in her absence. It is not surprising that the book is dedicated "To the memory of my mother."

I don't know if this book will be interesting to people who are fascinated by tractors. But the tractor provides an apt metaphor, or perhaps a paradox. The tractor is a simple, beautifully designed machine with a remarkable history. It is peaceful and productive but has frequently been the source of destruction, as when it is converted into a tank. It turns out that the author's real-life father has actually written a book on tractors. Go figure.

My guess is that the book has relevance to Ukrainian immigrants, old and new. It describes a terrifying Stalin-era Ukraine, or more specifically, the immigrants who managed to survive the terror. It describes the dark and corrupt new Ukraine, and the best and the worst of people emerging from that world. On the one hand, they have been invaded, murdered and enslaved by multiple corrupt countries. On the other, the war continues to rage within them, whether they know it or not.

Those interested in Ukraine and Ukrainians (here or in the home country) will find some insights in this novel. Ukraine is apparently a very different country from the U.S., and things that Westerners would see as corruption and inefficiency are normal matters there. If the reader is interested in the Ukraine or Ukrainians, then a helpful source is Anne Meridith Dalton's "Culture Shock: Ukraine." This book is very frank about how to deal with Ukrainians, how to maintain patience, and how to refrain from comparing everything to American ways. While Dalton emphasizes to the reader that Ukrainian culture may be difficult and infuriating for outsiders, she is always respectful of the Ukrainian culture and way of life.

If one is interested in family dynamics, then Lewycka's novel is a remarkable story. I found myself recalling a bunch of family systems theory as I read this book. For instance, you can chart out the family tree and observe the family dynamics.

The author is, in fact, an expert on the caretaking. She has written many books on caring for the elderly and those with various disabilities or illnesses. She has infused her novel with her knowledge of caretaking, but her vast expertise is kept just below the reader's radar. In one amusing turn, the narrator (who is a university lecturer) is dubbed a "social worker" at various times by her various relatives, and this becomes something of a running joke throughout the story.

Thanks to the author for a brilliant novel.

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 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 (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

18 of 19 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

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?