Just back from August Book Club - drinks and dinner on Brick Lance, London with Lou Ward, Sara, Dana & Becky Campbell - we're growing! Opinions on the book were split 50-50 ... Lou had the deciding vote but was unable to make a decision either way (we had to explain to Dana and Becky that Lou has special immunity from reading the book each month!!!) ...but it was interesting as the arguments for and against the book were the same... I guess what Dana and Becky found charming idiosyncrasies (?), Sar and I found try-hard humour (yes, we were the haters!!) - ouch!
The language of the book - every day, simple, to the point, functional - suited the story and the voices which were speaking it, however the aside comments eg. "I want" (he pronounced it "I vant") seemed unnecessary - I think we could imaging the Ukrainian accent without these asides! It seemed annoying and without purpose. A number of us noted that the author repeatedly used long paragraphs made up of lists to describe the garden, the pantry contents, etc... these seemed tedious, and like she was trying to bump up the word count. We were all miffed by the history of tractors which was woven through the book - we all felt like this was meant to subtly and cleverly parallel to the plot of the story... but none of us could actually confirm whether or not this happened... largely due to the fact that everyone owned up to skimming through these pages!
We like the characters - we could picture them and the scenes of the story well. None of the characters was completely lovable - but that is realistic in itself. My personal favourite was Mike - that he put up with the hours of listening to Nikolai talk about tractors was grounds for sainthood! Nikolai was plain annoying and pathetic in perfect proportions. I proposed - and Dana seconded - that throughout the book it was easy to imagine it as a movie... although it didn't strike me a being a highly descriptive book, by the end of the novel, I could clearly picture the players and scenes... do you think this was a deliberate move by the author to sell the movie rights? Or me just being overly critical?!?
My favourite part of the book was when Vera and Nadekh come to some kind of understanding and way to move forward: "I realise that Vera and I have developed a different kind of intimacy, based not on talking but on practicalities - we have learned to be partners." This really ouched on something profound for me - I think a lot of relationships are like this, which is not a good or bad thing but an interesting observation. Whether or not Nadekh could actually have come to the conclusions she did... well, to me it seemed a bit quick and neat, but by then I think I was looking for faults. I thought this would have been a good place for the book to end. Instead we had to go THERE... what the HELL was the final scene with Nikolai and the nude yoga about?! In conclusion, I didn't altogether hate "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" - I read it in 2 sittings and was quite engrossed by it. However I was often annoyed by the book - the language, the story, the characters, the smart-alek asides, what the purpose of the book was, the try-hard kookiness, the overly-clever parallel of the history of tractors - the work "contrived" spring to mind repeatedly.
PS the curry and wine got 5 out of 5 thumbs up.... so I guess it's Curry 1 - History of Tractors NIL
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