[bksvol-discuss] Just submitted: A short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
- From: "Amber Wallenstein" <amber.wallens@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:02:22 -0400
I have just submitted A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. This book was
marked as being adult and it should not be. Enjoy.
When their recently widowed father announces that he plans to remarry, sisters
Vera and Nadezhda realize that they must learn to put aside a lifetime of
bitter rivalry in order to save him. The new woman in his life is Valentina, a
voluptuous gold-digger from Ukraine, fifty years his junior, with fabulous
breasts and a proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine,
who will stop at nothing in her single-minded pursuit of the luxurious Western
lifestyle she dreams of. But separating their addled and annoyingly lecherous
dad from his new love will prove to be no easy feat-in terms of sheer cold-eyed
ruthlessness, the two sisters swiftly realize that they are rank amateurs. As
Hurricane Valentina turns the old family house upside down, all the old secrets
come falling out, including the most deeply buried one of them all, from the
war, the one that explains much about why Nadezhda and Vera are so different.
In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their father carries on with the great
work of his dotage-a grand history of the tractor and its role in human
progress, giving due credit to the crucial Ukrainian contribution. The story
carries us back to prerevolutionary Ukraine, through wartime Germany, to
contemporary England, taking in love and suffering, tanks and tractors,
bitchiness, sibling rivalry, and, above all, the joys of growing old
disgracefully. A funny, enchanting novel about the belated healing of old
family wounds under the most unlikely of circumstances and the trials and
consolations of old age, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian manages both
to transport us somewhere entirely fresh and to echo what we ourselves know in
our hearts about how families work (and don't). Written with great and
well-earned wit, empathy and grace, it is a debut worthy of full-throated
celebration. A wise, tender, deeply funny novel about an eccentric elderly
Ukrainian widower in England and the struggles of his two feuding daughters to
thwart the voluptuous young gold-digger from the old country who sweeps him off
his feet
Book blog:
http://community.livejournal.com/book_cuddler/
I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have
consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give
you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.
John Adams
E-Mail: amber.wallens@xxxxxxxxx
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