A short history of tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

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lemming
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A short history of tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Post by lemming »

My dad is in a similar situation to the dad in this book - 70 and pursues a relationship with a woman who's clearly a scam artist, and deep down he knows it. This novel's portrayal of an intelligent old man chasing an exciting but toxic woman is accurate. Both my dad and the 80 year old man in this book are smart enough to deep down know what is going on but also smart - and desperate - enough to talk themselves into continuing. Elaborate justifications and generalizing discussion of his folly to be about world politics or philosophy. I could totally see a man like this using even something like the impact of tractors on human history as a not-so-subtle allegory for his personal life. It takes guts to give a debut novel the driest title imaginable, but I enjoyed the links between excerpts from the father's opus in progress and the happenings in his life. I was less engaged by the deep dives into the family's history - felt like I missed the point of them apart from showing that there was more to the characters than what they had become, or at least the reasons why they had become that way were meant to make them more sympathetic and three-dimensional than they had first appeared. There seemed to also be some attempt to make the point that history, like the present, depends on who you ask, but that point has been made better by William Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom! The point of this book seemed to be to start with stereotypes and then flesh them out till they were rounded and believable, but somehow for me that made it one of those novels that left me going, "Huh? That was it?"
Latest Review: "Broken Land, A Brooklyn Tale" by John Biscello
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