Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka – Viking Books 2005
Winner of the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction
‘Mad and Hilarious’ Daily Telegraph
‘Extremely Funny’ The Times
‘Outstanding’ Daily Mail
A friend of mine recommended this book to me stating that it was a really funny book so when I found myself in the TAFE library I looked up the book on the computer catalogue and not being a librarian blanked at the number flashing back at me with the word General Section – where on earth was the general section? Not wanting to appear dim I wandered around and as the number was too long to remember I took a punt and searched in the fiction section under the Author’s name- Bingo – I picked it up and put it back down, Rosemary must have got the title wrong and the librarian has put this funny looking book in the wrong section – No I look again and read the words – it is the right book but how well it is disguised to look like a mechanics manual, a kind of brown cardboard cover with graphic design straight out of the Bauhaus New Typography school of design – utilitarian block text in red and blue slightly wonky as though the printer had cut the cover not square and due to the shortage of paper this would have to do – strangely it reminds me of books my mother had brought with her/had sent from Latvia after the second world war. The covers on those were wonky too! I am not going to review the story here, others have done that. I don’t need to re invent the wheel. I just wanted to say that as a cultural production this book has summed up the journey of the refugee fleeing communism and the aftermath of WWII right up to the present day it covers the last 60 years in 325 pages – it did not win the prize for being funny – it won the prize for being a book that everyone could read and digest because the presentation of the content made it so. This is about what happened to some of the survivors of the Russian and German regimes who were uprooted from their lives to live a different life in another country. A life where not too much detail is discussed because the memories are too difficult to bear and children learn not to poke their nose into other peoples business especially their own family’s business. I found this book revealing and poignant and deeply personal to me, the child of a refugee from Latvia. I did not laugh or find it funny although I so know why other reviewers did. This humour is the way that European people who have undergone such tragic upheaval deal with life – if you don’t laugh you will definitely cry! The collective memory has not been lost on the first generation out of war torn Europe – it is just below the surface – we don’t know what our parents and their ancestors and relatives had to bear, we can guess, but we will never know because the truth is hidden to dull the pain. To understand the implications of war and the still uneasy peace from the third angle of the people caught in the middle - and to understand our current concerns about boat people and political and economic refugees this book is a must read and should be compulsory on every politicians reading list.
Aida Pottinger
Winner of the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction
‘Mad and Hilarious’ Daily Telegraph
‘Extremely Funny’ The Times
‘Outstanding’ Daily Mail
A friend of mine recommended this book to me stating that it was a really funny book so when I found myself in the TAFE library I looked up the book on the computer catalogue and not being a librarian blanked at the number flashing back at me with the word General Section – where on earth was the general section? Not wanting to appear dim I wandered around and as the number was too long to remember I took a punt and searched in the fiction section under the Author’s name- Bingo – I picked it up and put it back down, Rosemary must have got the title wrong and the librarian has put this funny looking book in the wrong section – No I look again and read the words – it is the right book but how well it is disguised to look like a mechanics manual, a kind of brown cardboard cover with graphic design straight out of the Bauhaus New Typography school of design – utilitarian block text in red and blue slightly wonky as though the printer had cut the cover not square and due to the shortage of paper this would have to do – strangely it reminds me of books my mother had brought with her/had sent from Latvia after the second world war. The covers on those were wonky too! I am not going to review the story here, others have done that. I don’t need to re invent the wheel. I just wanted to say that as a cultural production this book has summed up the journey of the refugee fleeing communism and the aftermath of WWII right up to the present day it covers the last 60 years in 325 pages – it did not win the prize for being funny – it won the prize for being a book that everyone could read and digest because the presentation of the content made it so. This is about what happened to some of the survivors of the Russian and German regimes who were uprooted from their lives to live a different life in another country. A life where not too much detail is discussed because the memories are too difficult to bear and children learn not to poke their nose into other peoples business especially their own family’s business. I found this book revealing and poignant and deeply personal to me, the child of a refugee from Latvia. I did not laugh or find it funny although I so know why other reviewers did. This humour is the way that European people who have undergone such tragic upheaval deal with life – if you don’t laugh you will definitely cry! The collective memory has not been lost on the first generation out of war torn Europe – it is just below the surface – we don’t know what our parents and their ancestors and relatives had to bear, we can guess, but we will never know because the truth is hidden to dull the pain. To understand the implications of war and the still uneasy peace from the third angle of the people caught in the middle - and to understand our current concerns about boat people and political and economic refugees this book is a must read and should be compulsory on every politicians reading list.
Aida Pottinger
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