But before it does, the eighty-four-year-old Nikolai breaks under the pressure of Valentina’s “superior Botticellian breasts” and agrees to marry her. Meanwhile, Milla’s two daughters, Nadezdha and Vera, squabble over the division of her inheritance. Her husband, the wilful Nikolai develops an obsession with a beautiful Ukrainian immigrant called Valentina. In an allusion to the dying fingers of Soviet Russia – Mother Russia – the death of Milla leaves her family divided. Ludmilla, mother of the fifty-year-old narrator, Nadezdha, has recently died. At a guess, both feel an uncomfortable gap between their identity and their history. Her own story overlaps somewhat with the narrator of A Short History: both daughters of Ukrainian economic migrants who were railroaded, often literally, by the Second World War. Its author is Marina Lewycka, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. The cover is nicely east European: duotone block print. Helpfully, the book is subtitled “a novel”. The marketing executives at Viking must have tapped pens thoughtfully against teeth before agreeing to the title, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |