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• 3 people find this helpful

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  • Supposedly an uproariously funny book. I found myself annoyed at the way it was written though. A bit too contrived for my taste.

    

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• ― annemarie (annemarie) said on Apr 26, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• 3 people find this helpful

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  • Hilarious with an intriguing plot. The characters are funny and the prose fluid. You would have attended a lesson on Ukranian history after finishing the book.

    Ukrania is not a fun place to live though ...

    

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• ― Tracy W said on Apr 12, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• 1 person find this helpful

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  • So, the cover of this edition sells the book to you as hilarious and funny... I must say I don't agree that much. Maybe it's me, maybe I don't have a good sense of humour, but I actually found this novel bittersweet and melancholy. True, there are some funny moments - but they always have this sort ... Continue

    So, the cover of this edition sells the book to you as hilarious and funny... I must say I don't agree that much. Maybe it's me, maybe I don't have a good sense of humour, but I actually found this novel bittersweet and melancholy. True, there are some funny moments - but they always have this sort of lurking background sadness.
    That said, it's very intelligent, a very interesting description of old age and senility, of greed, of family relations and of the importance of memory. I liked it. it's thought provoking, and the writers masters language very well, occasionally creating very funny scenes with it.
    So, I do recommend it, but not if you just read another sad book and are in search of something lighter, like I was ;)

    

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• ― natalia (aicha) said on Oct 16, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • A great read! Enjoyed every page.

    

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• ― DBJ said on Nov 4, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

  • Why on earth did this sit on my bookshelf for so long before I got around to reading it? It is an absolute delight and I kept reading and laughing when I should have been sleeping.
    It is a tragic comedy about a Ukrainian family domiciled in the Uk for many years. The protagonist is the widowed ... Continue

    Why on earth did this sit on my bookshelf for so long before I got around to reading it? It is an absolute delight and I kept reading and laughing when I should have been sleeping.
    It is a tragic comedy about a Ukrainian family domiciled in the Uk for many years. The protagonist is the widowed elderly father of Nadezhda and Vera who falls in love with a Ukrainian many years his junior. The subject of his misguided love is Valentina who plans to exploit him and marry him as a means of staying in the UK along with her son Stanislav. The two sisters have not had a close relationship but they are drawn closer in their bid to prevent Valentina stepping in and taking over their mother Ludmilla's place in their former home.
    The characters are all extremely well portrayed and I found it easy to visualise them all from brassy Valentina to the two womens lonely and lecherous Pappa. There are some very amusing descriptions in the book, particularly involving these two characters.
    As well as hearing details of the battle against Valentina from the narrator Nadezhda we also learn something of the families history and their reasons behind leaving the Ukraine, which is both sorrowful and believable. Heedless of the upset he is causing around him throughout the story Pappa continues with his lifes work trying to complete a written history of the tractor. I did not find these sections of particular interest but by the end realised the relevance.
    I now plan to read Two Caravans as soon as possible.

    

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• ― Lindyloumac said on Aug 30, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Una storia dal sapore agrodolce, dove, a parte le ovvie differenze di contesto, è facile che ognuno ritrovi le piccole o grandi beghe familiari ed il proprio carico genetico di segreti e mezze verità… un libro tanto più vicino a chi, come me, sinistroide per nascita, si è sentito trasformato, almen ... Continue

    Una storia dal sapore agrodolce, dove, a parte le ovvie differenze di contesto, è facile che ognuno ritrovi le piccole o grandi beghe familiari ed il proprio carico genetico di segreti e mezze verità… un libro tanto più vicino a chi, come me, sinistroide per nascita, si è sentito trasformato, almeno una volta, in Mrs Flog-’em-and-send-‘em-home; non un libro “extremely funny” come dice il Times, ma un libro vicino alla gente… vero, piacevole, ma non di più.

    

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• ― Magenta said on Feb 21, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

When their recently widowed father announces that he plans to remarry, sisters Vera and Nadezhda realize that they must learn to put aside a lifetime of bitter rivalry in order to save him. The new woman in his life is Valentina, a voluptuous gold-digger from Ukraine, fifty years his junior, with fabulous breasts and a proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, who will stop at nothing in her single-minded pursuit of the luxurious Western lifestyle she dreams of. But separating their addled and annoyingly lecherous dad from his new love will prove to be no easy feat-in terms of sheer cold-eyed ruthlessness, the two sisters swiftly realize that they are rank amateurs. As Hurricane Valentina turns the old family house upside down, all the old secrets come falling out, including the most deeply buried one of them all, from the war, the one that explains much about why Nadezhda and Vera are so different. In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their father carries on with the great work of his dotage-a grand history of the tractor and its role in human progress, giving due credit to the crucial Ukrainian contribution. The story carries us back to prerevolutionary Ukraine, through wartime Germany, to contemporary England, taking in love and suffering, tanks and tractors, bitchiness, sibling rivalry, and, above all, the joys of growing old disgracefully.

A funny, enchanting novel about the belated healing of old family wounds under the most unlikely of circumstances and the trials and consolations of old age, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian manages both to transport us somewhere entirely fresh and to echo what we ourselves know in our hearts about how families work (and don't). Written with great and well-earned wit, empathy and grace, it is a debut worthy of full-throated celebration.

A wise, tender, deeply funny novel about an eccentric elderly Ukrainian widower in England and the struggles of his two feuding daughters to thwart the voluptuous young gold-digger from the old country who sweeps him off his feet

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