Two years after Nadia's mother died, her 84-year-old father fell in love with a 36-year-old Ukrainian divorceé . Her name is Valentina and she has golden hair, a pair of superior Botticellian breasts, and a penchant for boil-in-the-bag cuisine. But what do you do when your father refuses to see that his blonde Venus is naught but a gold-digger? Why, you call your sister Vera, to whom you haven't spoken in two years, and the two of you band together to save your father from himself.
When it comes to dysfunctional immigrant family comedies, it's very easy to resort to cliché. Luckily for readers and Ukrainians alike, Ms. Lewycka respects her subjects enough to maintain the tricky balance between hysterical farce and tragedy. As the book progresses, our narrator, Nadia, and her sister Vera attempt to pry Valentina away from their father, which parallels the unfolding of Nadia's family past and her fathers chef d'oeuvre, a history of tractors in Ukrainian.
Although the novel is narrated by Nadia, her father, Nikolai, is the main character. He was never an easy man to like or respect, and his infatuation for Valentina clinches it – witness the scene in which Valentina chases her elderly husband around the house with yellow rubber gloves, shrieking an assortment of invectives in broken English as her projectile breasts point the way like Rottweilers in heat (okay, I'm projecting the latter, but I'm sure they did, which is a testament to the author's descriptive powers). It's a moment of insane hilarity as well as terrifying pathos for, while Valentina is undeniably despicable, it's hard to fault her scorn for a pathetic, narrow-minded old man. His daughters find themselves torn between filial loyalty and womanly contempt, but, as Nikolai’s complex past is revealed and he gains a measure of self-respect, Nadia and the reader come to accept and understand him.
Like every family, the Mayevskas have their share of cracks. Through bits and pieces, Nadia relates a poignant and sorrowful tale across the generations and the message of the family history is that no matter the divide and no matter the cause, one still makes do. Nikolai's first marriage was not perfect, yet both parties made the best of it, a lesson the sisters learn over the course of the book. Separated by ten years and one world war, Vera and Nadia come from two different worlds, but Valentina's entrance into their lives, while distasteful, proves the catalyst to their eventual accord.
But when a novel is devoted to so many threads – past, present, and a history of tractors in Ukrainian, not to forget the excerpts from that worthy tome – balancing all the elements requires delicacy and momentum. Ms. Lewycka ably provides the former by narrating the present and past in their respective tenses, which gives the parallel timelines tangibility in that the author’s fragmented present tense suits the farcical immediacy of Valentina's shenanigans, while the past is given a weightier, more solemn tone. But this effectively separates the reader from the story, which lacks emotional pull. Part of the blame goes to Nadia, who is a superb narrator, but a bland character.
However, in the grand scheme of things Marina Lewycka supplies depth where too often authors rely on shallow gags. Despite a title that seems to owe more to the need for quirkiness rather than relevance, Ms. Lewycka's debut novel is both relevant and worth reading.
-- Jean Wan
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