se71

« Outlook Hack | Main | Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell »

September 08, 2006

A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

There are passages in this novel of a ficticious non-ficton book on the history of the tractor. Oddly enough, these sections are by far the most interesting bits of Marina Lewycka's overhyped first book.

I'm a sucker for best sellers and prize winners. I got suckered into reading "The Da Vinci Code", "The Shadow of the Wind", "An American Boy" and many others - all truely terrible books. And now I've succumbed yet again and am living to regret it. Maybe there just aren't that many good books around.

This is touted as being a comedy, but I found it distasteful and pathetic. It's the story of an 84 year old widower, who gets involved with a Ukrainian refugee in her thirties. His two daughters try to protect him from what they see as an attempt to part him with his money, and a tedious drawn out battle ensues. Each new disaster is supposed to be amusing, but since when was an partly senile old man soiling himself funny?

The story has many flashbacks to periods during the Second World War. We are told how hard it was for families in the Ukraine, and the trials this particular family went to to survive, and ultimately escape. This was more sensitively written, and provided a bit more insight into a somewhat overlooked tragedy; the loss of as much as 20% of the population of that country - 8 million people. Unfortunately juxtaposing this with the farce occurring in the rest of the story didn't really work.

I found the writing style juvenile and annoying also, and there were long paragraphs that were completely gratuitous (a list for example of every vegetable growing in the garden, closely followed by another list of all the flowers). This is just desperate page filler and should have been cut. Constantly reminding us how Ukrainian people pronounce English words got very tiresome too.

I am at a complete loss as to why this book is so successful, and I'm afraid to say that I think a few loose ends will mean an inevitable sequel will follow in due course.

Posted by se71 at September 8, 2006 12:55 PM

Comments

Post a comment