Will I love A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian?

This book was published in 2006 and I must have read a review of it around then. However, it got hidden on a bookshelf until this year. I'm so glad I waited to read it because in 2024, the references to Ukrainian history, cities, and towns has much more meaning for me than it would have when I bought the book. It's a funny, poignant portrayal of interesting and odd family dynamics sprinkled with much love for Ukraine and Ukrainians.

This is another book I read that made me think that the story of immigration into a provincial, rather than big city, setting was something people would read. It also made me think, that all parents, immigrants or not, have a massive calling to be deeply embarrassing.

Marina’s story to publication is an inspiring one, too. She was fifty-eight when this, her debut novel, was published.

Concealed inside this comic tale of an octogenarian newly widowed father, finding romance with a much younger Ukrainian barmaid is a lesson that all immigrants must one day learn. Just because someone else is… show more.

Vera and Nadezhda are sisters who must set aside their differences to ward off an interloper: a gold-digging “fluffy pink grenade” who gets her claws into their exceedingly difficult emigre father. The ensuing battle uncovers hidden chapters of a dark family history, and Lewycka is both masterful and unflinching in her treatment of traumatic history. I was expecting a light read from start to finish, and while the book is very funny, it is also disarmingly profound.   

Forget everything you know about farm machinery manufacture in Ukraine, this is a story of growing old disgracefully (woohoo!) in which a randy old widower of 84 weds a voluptuous 36-year-old blonde “golden hair, superior breasts... when you see her you will understand,” he tells his daughter. After all, he’s known her for three months and she has a penchant for green silk underwear.

Wise, funny, warm, bitchy, author Lewycka absolutely nails this story about old country familial love and frailty.

Not sure what she knows about Ukrainian tractors, but who cares? She has a poet’s love of language and… show more.