My attention was drawn to this 2005 novel by a friend whose book club has it scheduled for discussion and she wondered what I thought. The first thing to note, is the date of publication. It was published seventeen years before Ukraine’s current war. Be aware too that it’s fiction – as I wasn’t – until, very curious, I read the first page and realised that the title is ruefully ironic. This is a novel about a family of Ukrainian descent living in Peterborough, or at least that’s where the family home is.
Nadezsha (Nadia) who narrates, is a happily married sociology lecturer at Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge. She is worried about her 84 year old widowed father. He is a highly educated engineer who, eventually escaped the horrors of World War Two, Stalin and camps and came to England with his wife Ludmilla. She too had lived through terrible experiences in her homeland, alongside her elder daughter Vera.
Pappa is writing a history of tractors, whose title provides the title of the novel. It is also, incidentally, a history of the Soviet Union, including, of course, Ukraine. He regards tractors as the basis of all political outcomes as he patiently explains at length and many time to Nadia’s rather wonderful husband Mike while Nadia tries to sort out the mess her father has allowed his life to get into.
The mess is called Valentina. She is a blousy, not very law-abiding Ukranian women with huge breasts (Nadia discovers a bill for their enlargement) and no money. Fifty years younger than Pappa, she is on the make, wants to stay in Britain and targets the old man who is lonely and very susceptible. Well Reader, he marries her and the situation gets ever more complicated. But Lewycka is too good a novelist just to make Valentina into a scheming pantomime villain preceded by her grossly enlarged assets. Yes, she isn’t very nice and you want Pappa to get shot of her (although he’s capriciously ambivalent) but she’s also a quite hardworking woman trying to maximise opportunities for her teenage son in a culture she doesn’t fully understand. So we, and Nadia, do feel some sympathy.
The characterisation in this novel is splendid. There is a long-standing feud between Nadia and her sister although they do have to co-operate now because of Pappa. Gradually we learn the roots of the conflict. Vera is ten years older and remembers the camps. She is a tough divorcee and despises Nadia, born in Britain, for her liberal views but there is slow burn reconciliation which is rather uplifting – and an intelligent exploration of how misunderstandings and simply not knowing the truth can fester in a family. Also beautifully drawn is Valentina’s ex-husband, an academic working in Ukraine – calm, measured, determined and likeable.
I learned a lot from this novel about the history of Ukraine and how the experiences they have lived through must have shaped people like Pappa and Valentina. I also chuckled – often. Lewycka has, consciously, or not, borrowed a technique from Dickens which worked comically for him every time as it does for her. When she gets on the warpath Nadia dubs herself “Mrs Flog-‘em-and-send-‘em-home” and sustains the joke at her own expense for hundreds of pages. Pappa is forced to buy Valentina, who has never passed a driving test, a car (well three, actually) one of which is dismissed by her as “crap car” because it won’t go. Her English is short on conjunctions, articles and verbs but contains strings of angry nouns. Nadia refers to it as “crap car” for the rest of the novel. There is a lot of tragic-comedy in Lewyck’s writing and it makes this novel as appealing as it is revealing.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Trelawny’s Cornwall by Petroc Trelawny
