A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Marina Lewycka begins her first novel by describing the blonde, 36-year-old Ukrainian divorcee who marries an 84-year-old Ukrainian widower in England: "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."

This sensitive yet humorous portrayal of the problems of aging takes off as narrator Nadia and her older sister Lena, both grown, don't want their father to marry the "gold digger." He is eager, though, to have one more fling at love. Lewycka's black comedy successfully weaves together many threads-the improbable romance and its aftermath, the old man's writings about tractors, the family's history of surviving the Ukrainian famine and war, and the sibling rivalry born out of different experiences and different understandings of human nature.