> Orig. published in 2005
> Author's parents Ukrainian, born in Germany
> Opening line: "Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee." Love it!
> p.4..."You see, he explains, he is her last hope, her only chance to escape persecution, destitution, prostitution."
> p.19..."She knew - and this knowledge never left her throughout her fifty years of life in England, and then seeped from her into the hearts of her children - she knew for certain that behind the piled-high shelves and abundantly stocked counters of Tesco and the Co-op hunger still prowls with his skeletal frame and gaping eyes, waiting to grab you the moment you are off your guard."...powerful statement...probably true for many refugees!
> p.44..."In the shadowy kingdom of childhood, where my sister was queen, my father was the exiled Pretender. A long time ago, they went to war against each other. It was so long ago that don't know what they first clashed about, and they have probably forgotten too. My father made a tactical retreat into the domain of his garage, his constructions of aluminum, rubber, and wood, his coughing and Big Ideas. From time to time h would surge forth in angry blazing forays directed towards my sister and, after she left home, towards me."... pretty classic
> p.48..."We spoke a different language from our neighbors and ate different food, and worked hard and kept out of everybody's way, and we were always good so the secret police wouldn't come for us in the night."
> p.67..."What a poor thing is the crane or tractor compared to a horse!"
> p.70..."Ah, love! What a thing is love! No one can understand. On this point, science must concede to poetry."
> p.77..."Nada, if all women were to wear paint on their faces, just think, there could be no more natural selection. The inevitable result would be the uglification of the species."
> p.81..."The coming of the tractor was also of symbolic importance, for it made possible the ploughing up of boundary lands which separated the individual peasant strips, creating one large kolkhoz. Thus it heralded the end of the whole class of kulaks, those peasants who owned their own land, and were seen by Stalin as the enemy of the revolution. The iron horse destroyed the traditional pattern of village life, but the tractor industry in Ukrainia flourished."
> p.107..."In design of aircraft wing, the secret of success s to achieve the correct ration between lift and drag. Is same with Valentina."
> p.136..."The Valentine tank.....there was nothing lovely about it. Clumsy and heavy with an old-fashioned gearbox, it was nevertheless deadly, indeed a true killing machine."
> LibraryThing Review: This one is worth reading for the writing! This is an odd duck of a book. The plot....well...two sisters try to protect their frail, elderly father from a Ukrainian fortune hunter with large breasts. The characters......very believable. The writing.....absolutely marvelous! Marina Lewycka is incredibly funny. I laughed out loud several times. At other times I was appalled. At other times I was deeply saddened.
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