A short history of tractors in Ukrainian /

Vera and Nadezhda have not spoken to one another since their mother's funeral two years ago. But the news that their eccentric 83-year-old father, Nikolai, wants to marry a 36-year-old woman from Ukraine so that she can stay in England causes them to work past their differences to save the old man from himself. Despite their efforts, Valentina moves in with Nikolai and begins to demand the good life the West is supposed to provide her, from a civilized person's Hoover and a not-peasant-cooking stove to a Rolls-Royce. As Valentina's demands become more ridiculous, the sisters band closer together to get her out, while Nikolai begins his laborious work on the history of the tractor and its effect on society. While the sisters and Valentina spar, Nadezhda struggles to put together the pieces of her family's past in Ukraine and Germany during World War II. Drawing on her own family, Lewycka has created a funny, tender, and intelligent novel that is as much social history as family saga. It is a delight. --Elizabeth Dickie Copyright 2005 Booklist

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. Agent, Bill Hamilton. (Mar. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Ancient widower weds gold digger; daughters intervene; goodbye, gold digger. The old man who makes a fool of himself over a younger woman is a staple of the human comedy, and, in Lewycka's first novel, the old man lives in England, an immigrant from Ukraine like the author herself. Kolya Mayovskyj is an octogenarian, a retired engineer with a love of poetry, philosophy and tractors. His wife, Ludmilla, has been dead two years when he meets another Ukrainian, 36-year-old Valentina, and is enchanted by her winning ways and massive boobs. Valentina needs the right papers for herself and her teenaged son Stanislav, and as much of Kolya's money as she can get her hands on. The story is narrated by Nadia, one of Kolya's two daughters, a university lecturer with an English husband and child, though we learn little about them. The focus is on her father, the book he's writing (see title), his past in the old country, and her relationship with her sister Vera, ten years older. The sisters haven't spoken since a disagreement over their mother's will, but the common enemy Valentina draws them back together. Their rapprochement is strengthened once Nadia learns their family's darkest secret (the fight for survival, before she was born, in a German labor camp). Now the sisters contact lawyers and immigration authorities. Their father's marriage soon turns sour, and the frail Kolya's adoration of Valentina turns to fear as the promiscuous predator physically abuses him. Not that Kolya is unduly sympathetic himself, as flashbacks show him responsible for his mother-in-law's death back in Ukraine. He eventually agrees to a divorce, and another go-round of hearings and appeals yields little drama or comedy, even with the extra fillip of Valentina's pregnancy (Kolya decidedly not the father). The deus ex machina is Valentina's former husband, newly arrived from Ukraine. Not enough here to reinvigorate an old, old story. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.