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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
"Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside"
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.
But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget ...
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the winner of the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction, I was surprised that this book failed to leave much of an impression on me. There is humour in here, particularly through the dialogue as Lewycka has a good ear for how non-English speakers talk in the language and the slyness of Nadezhda's first person narration. However elements of the story left me feeling very uncomfortable, notably in the deterioration of the relationship between Valentina and Nikolai (the eighty-four year old father) which effectively descends into abuse, with Valentina hitting him, locking him in a room and leaving him in soiled clothes. I found it difficult to find the humour in that situation and Lewycka doesn't really dwell on the implications. At the same time, she wants to have it both ways with Valentina - on the one hand she's a blatant money-grabber out for all she can get and yet she also wants us to feel sympathy for her and the hardships that she's endured. It's a balancing act that doesn't really come off.
I liked the character of Vera, the hard-bitten cynical elder sister who knows what Valentina's up to and sets out putting a stop to it. She frequently calls Nadezhda's on her woolley-minded wishy-washyness and with her knowledge of divorce law she knows what sort of things to look for. I also found that I could believe in the stubborn, infuriating Nikolai - a man who sees Valentina as offering a new lease of life and who believes himself to be in love with her or what she represents. He's someone who wants his daughters' help when he needs it but at the same time resents their interference and I found it something very easy to recognise.
The plot includes a soft satire on attitudes towards immigrants and the role of the Immigration Service and there are wry chuckles to be had from the difficulties that the sisters go through in trying to get the Immigration Service to speed up the deportation of Valentina, even when they have an abundance of evidence. However the ending is quite pat and didn't really satisfy me, mainly because Lewycka is too keen to give everyone a happy ending, even the scheming Valentina.
It's frothy, fast moving and is quite funny, but it's not something I'd want to re-read.
The Verdict:
It's okay and it did make me chuckle in places. However it didn't really leave a lasting impression and I don't think the segments involving elder abuse sat comfortably with the rest of the book.
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.
But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget ...
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the winner of the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction, I was surprised that this book failed to leave much of an impression on me. There is humour in here, particularly through the dialogue as Lewycka has a good ear for how non-English speakers talk in the language and the slyness of Nadezhda's first person narration. However elements of the story left me feeling very uncomfortable, notably in the deterioration of the relationship between Valentina and Nikolai (the eighty-four year old father) which effectively descends into abuse, with Valentina hitting him, locking him in a room and leaving him in soiled clothes. I found it difficult to find the humour in that situation and Lewycka doesn't really dwell on the implications. At the same time, she wants to have it both ways with Valentina - on the one hand she's a blatant money-grabber out for all she can get and yet she also wants us to feel sympathy for her and the hardships that she's endured. It's a balancing act that doesn't really come off.
I liked the character of Vera, the hard-bitten cynical elder sister who knows what Valentina's up to and sets out putting a stop to it. She frequently calls Nadezhda's on her woolley-minded wishy-washyness and with her knowledge of divorce law she knows what sort of things to look for. I also found that I could believe in the stubborn, infuriating Nikolai - a man who sees Valentina as offering a new lease of life and who believes himself to be in love with her or what she represents. He's someone who wants his daughters' help when he needs it but at the same time resents their interference and I found it something very easy to recognise.
The plot includes a soft satire on attitudes towards immigrants and the role of the Immigration Service and there are wry chuckles to be had from the difficulties that the sisters go through in trying to get the Immigration Service to speed up the deportation of Valentina, even when they have an abundance of evidence. However the ending is quite pat and didn't really satisfy me, mainly because Lewycka is too keen to give everyone a happy ending, even the scheming Valentina.
It's frothy, fast moving and is quite funny, but it's not something I'd want to re-read.
The Verdict:
It's okay and it did make me chuckle in places. However it didn't really leave a lasting impression and I don't think the segments involving elder abuse sat comfortably with the rest of the book.
