I just finished reading this book, and it was wonderful. The author, Marina Lewycka, is of Ukrainian heritage, and she has done a fabulous job of capturing not only the mindset, but the hybrid language (and insults!) of her characters.
This is the story of a Ukrainian family living in England. The father, an eightysomething widower, is in love with a voluptuous young Ukrainian woman. Very voluptuous, and very young. Needless to say, his two adult daughters are skeptical of her motives. The book is by turns hysterically funny and heartbreaking. It deals with the issues of ageing parents, East/West, war and peace, and historical truth vs. perception. The last page is pure genius: it left me with a smile on my face that stayed there for hours.
This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it.
Are you Ukrainian?
Vic
No, I’m not. I studied several Slavic languages in uni, though, and lived in Eastern Europe for a while, so it’s an area that interests me.
How interesting. My supervisor of many years was Ukrainian and a best friend of my Mother’s was too. Having only heard of the USSR for most of my life, I had zero knowledge of the countries that Russian took over to form the USSR. Both Alexandra and Bob are very vocal about the subject and it was fun to learn about another country I had never heard of before.
Vic
Oh, wow. When I was growing up, most of my mother’s friends were Hungarian. I thought there were Hungarians all over everything, but of course it turned out it was a relatively small group but we knew all of them and they were all related. So I think it was sort of ingrained in me early on that Eastern/Central Europe was a fascinating place, and when I got to uni I started right in with Russian. We had to learn all the SSRs during the first semester – came in really handy when the Soviet Union broke up, ’cause I actually knew all the new country names