Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #706 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Synopsis
A field of strawberries in Kent ... And sitting in it two caravans - one for the men and one for the women. The residents are from all over: miner's son Andriy is from the old Ukraine, while sexy young Irina is from the new: they eye each other warily. There are the Poles Tomasz and Yola, two Chinese girls and Emanuel from Malawi. They're all here to pick strawberries in England's green and pleasant land. But these days England's not so pleasant for immigrants. Not with Russian gangster-wannabes like Vulk, who's taken a shine to Irina and thinks kidnapping is a wooing strategy. And so Andriy - who really doesn't fancy Irina, honest - must set off in search of that girl he's not in love with.

From the Back Cover
`Her last book was entertaining, but this one is better...Very buoyant, witty and informative' The Sunday Times

`A great romp...with considerable heart and winsomeness' Literary Review

`Another black comedy masterpiece...an extraordinary, surprisingly funny tale' Easy Living

'Lewycka's heartfelt and funny novel packs as big a punch as any hard-hitting political polemic' Daily Mail

`Another winner from the author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' Woman and Home

`Marina Lewycka has pulled off another story with a big heart' Daily Express

`Lewycka's heartfelt and funny novel packs as big a punch as any hard-hitting political polemic' Daily Mail

`An extremely funny book' Times Literary Supplement

About the Author
Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the war, and grew up in England. She is married, with a grown-up daughter, and lives in Sheffield.

Customer Reviews

Beauty in simplicity
I find this book a typical example of how simple can be rich and poetic, without being pretentious and pathetic.

I enjoy the characters and how honest about themselves they are, and when it comes to nature descriptions, I can't remember feeling as if the leaves are touching my skin in any book I've ever read except for this one.

Also, helps you become a firm vegetarian!

Beautiful style, too.

Good Idea but it Got Silly
I couldn't wait to finish this book, but sadly not because I was enjoying it but because, whilst wanting to know what happened, I really wanted to move onto something more entertaining.

Having found her previous book A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian interesting if slightly unedifying, I had at least some hopes of this follow up.

Lewycka certainly hit upon a good idea - the plight of immigrant workers in the United Kingdom. But she can't quite make up her mind whether she wants to produce biting satire, a serious study or a comedy and it falls horribly somewhere in the vague region of all three and that makes for a very disappointing read.

The book ambles and rambles - suddenly moving off at a tangent where characters are dropped or just seem to go missing. In the end it develops into a kind of Ukrainian love story that becomes more and more implausible as it continues. It could have been a novel about the plight of immigrant workers - it isn't. It could have been a novel about the gang masters - it isn't. It could have been a study about the triumph of good over evil - it isn't.

Lewycka seems to insist on making her characters zany - we even have one of the main characters from her previous novel turn up in a Peterborough nursing home. When at the end some of the central characters come together in Sheffield I was left with the feeling of 1/ just how did they get there and 2/ so what.

Earlier parts of the book are sharp and at times well penned but by the end the whole thing has degenerated into a kind of pastiche. There's even a dog that has thoughts and these appear in the novel in capitals - and that's just plain silly.

Depressing
I read the blurb and as this was described as being a humourous novel, I selected the book as light holiday reading. I found the humour such as it was, to be extremely contrived and barely smiled once! The story was extremely depressing and the bit about the chickens was just awful! We have all heard the horror stories but in a book described as comical......could have done without this book. Certainly not light holiday stuff!