A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian- Marina Lewycka

"Mad and hilarious" Daily Telegraph.

"Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukranian divorcee. He was 84, and she was 36. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside."
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit for Western wealth.

This book was laugh out loud funny and it's characters an absolute triumph! The use of the language spoken by many of the characters-half English, half Ukranian- really brought them to life. Lewycka brings humour to the struggles of immigration, but really captures a sense of these difficulties without seeming flippant. For me, some of the less likable characters, Vera, and Valentina for example are made vulnerable and human leading you to empathise with their take on the world. Despite the humour of the book, there is a darker theme, the past adversities suffered by the older generations. An evocative portrait of early twentieth century Soviet Union emerges, and is an education and a delight to read. This novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction.
Fantastic.

"Thought provoking, uproariously funny, a comic feast." Economist

We Need To Talk About Kevin- Lionel Shriver

"Few novels leave you gasping at the final paragraph as if the breath had been knocked from your body. Such is the impact of We Need To Talk About Kevin" The Bookseller.

"A child needs your love most when he deserves it least" - Erma Bombeck.

Shortly before his 16th birthday, Kevin Khatchadourian kills seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher. He is visited in prison by his mother Eva, who, in a series of letters to her husband, narrates her account of Kevin's upbringing. Was Kevin just born bad, or were there other factors contributing to this tragedy? This "whydunnit" novel presents a harrowing study of the nature/nurture debate.
Although the subject matter is of a Columbine type high-school massacre, the main theme of the book is Eva's relationship with her son, tackling the sensitive, almost taboo, proposition that mothers can be unmoved by, and even dislike, their own children.
This book, the winner of the Orange Prize For Fiction 2005, had a profound effect on me, and I would rate it as one of the best books I have ever read. This novel makes for some harrowing reading and almost unbearable suspense.Lionel Shriver's prose is intelligent, observant and very brave, which is made all the more phenomenal by the fact that she has no children herself.
The book leaves the reader with more questions than answers, and provokes debate. A classic book-group read that will haunt long after it is finished.

"Forces the reader to confront assumptions about love and parenting, about how and why we apportion blame, about crime and punishment, forgiveness and redemption" Independent.