Review: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

This is a touching and sometimes funny story of a small family struggling with death, old age and old grudges.

Vera and Nadezhda are the British-raised children of Ukrainian refugees. Never close, and now middle-aged and established in their very different lives, their differences have been exacerbated by the death of their mother, who had been the centre that held their family together. The sisters disagreed over everything from their mother's care during her last days to the disposal of the little she had to leave.

Family relationships are unlike any others. The middle-aged sisters react to each other like the little girls they once were, following patterns which have worn deep grooves over the decades. And although they have a long shared family history, they do not share the same history; each experienced the same events in her own way. And one, being older, has memories the other does not.

Voluptuous Valentina, one of the post-Soviet would-be emigrants from the Ukraine, swaggers onto the scene shortly after the sisters' mother's death, alternately fascinating and terrifying Nikolai, their elderly father. He is easily convinced to marry Valentina, combining a desire to be a knight rescuing a lady in distress with a very real appreciation of Valentina's comparatively youthful beauty, and especially of her beautiful breasts. His daughters are less admiring of and sympathetic to Valentina.

Nadezhda, the younger of the daughters, narrates this tale of what it means to be part of a family and how each member creates his or her own understanding of their family. Issues of age, vulnerability, and autonomy are among those delicately explored by the author.

The story is based on history - personal, family and national. Nicolai has, of course, lived through more history (in all senses) than his daughters have. But when life gets too difficult and too complicated, he retreats to his master work, the book he is writing on the history of the tractor. Nadezhda and Vera, uninterested in the history of tractors, carefully and cautiously work out their own histories while playing out their roles as sisters and daughters.

Family history is not factual. It is created from the stories parents tell children about their origins, their lost relatives and their parents' youth and courtship - all edited for the children's ears and transformed by children's imagination, painful material removed, suffering transformed into adventure and triumph. This is the material Nadezhda is working through to create her own version of her family history. But she needs her sister's help in this creation, just as she needs her sister's help in caring for their father.

This novel, without sentimentality and with humour, shows how families survive and continue in spite of the personal differences among the family members and how our understanding of ourselves and our places in our families, like Nadezhda's, changes and grows.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Cheryl - RAM

Book Review: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian