Marina Lewycka: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

I was at the airport waiting for the flight to Kiev on the way to Crimea for holidays. I like having something light to read on holidays so I walked into an airport bookshop searching for something appropriate and I saw this book. I don't know what it was - that it had Ukraine in the title or the funny old lady on the tractor on the cover that made me buy it. Maybe it was my emotional attachment to tractors - when I was a kid I spent all my holidays in the countryside at my grandma's, with my favourite time of all being the harvest with all the machinery that went out on the roads at that time, including tractors. One of the holiday highlights I remember is the time my uncle let me "drive" one of those amazing things... Well, okay, he drove it but I had my both hands on the wheel too!

Anyway, I didn't get to read the book on that holiday as my lovely other half got his hands on it first. That should be enough of a credit to this book as he rarely reaches for anything that's not a business book (must have been the tractors too...). I read it when we got home though and it was fun to read indeed.

The story is about an old widowed man who immigrated to England in 1946 running away from the Stalinist Russia. He lives on his own, has two daughters who regularly come to visit him with their families. Until he falls in love with another Ukrainian emigrant woman - a 36 year old Valentina. The feeling is mutual - Valentina loves Nikolai for his power of getting her a permanent visa, for his money and for his house. And what an interesting character she is! I really enjoyed the detailed description of her bedroom that Marina treated us to and was truly amused by all the new ideas Valentina kept coming up with like her sophisticated taste for cars for instance. The way she bullies the old man and exploits his love to her is merciless and makes you hope love isn't really this blind. However Nikolai isn't alone in his misery - his two daughters who used to argue over their principles every time they spoke get reunited on the mission to get rid of their potential stepmother. It's a funny story overall, perfect light read for holiday / plane / train.

It also touches on some of the Ukrainian history - the civil war, the Stalin years, the Second World War and the survival in a concentration camp. It shows how the past you have been trying to forget about all your life impacts everything you do, the way you think, the way you are.

Oh yes, I almost forgot - and there are the tractors too! We do get to know a lot about them through the book Nikolai is writing and reading aloud whenever he finds an audience. It's an interesting side story – of how technology, here tractors, when misused may lead to the rise of Fascism in Germany and Communism in Russia and a world war as an effect...

My rating: YYYYY