Sophie Lewis
Keeping it in the Family
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
By Marina Lewycka
Viking 336pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
This title deserves a second chance. My first instinct was to recoil. What could be more boring or abstruse than a history of tractors in a foreign language? This is surely the stuff of the dustiest scholarship. And then an appreciation of whimsy kicks in. There must be more to it.
There is an academic treatise on the history of tractors at the centre of the story. It snakes through the book like a backbone of fact, read out chapter by chapter as it is written, by Nikolai Mayevskyj, the narrator Nadia’s ageing and eccentric father. While she battles to save
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Stuck for a Father's Day gift?
We'll send you a free hardback copy of @BurlM11's 'Day of the Assassins when you subscribe OR give a gift subscription to Literary Review.
Enter the code FATHER21 at checkout.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/father21/
'This is one of the most engaging cold-case novels I have read.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews novels by @sarah_hilary, @erskine_fiona, @aadhand, @claremackint0sh, @imranmahmood777, @NancyCNTucker, @josephknox__, @SlaughterKarin, @T_J_Newman & @Egan_Hughes.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/june-2021-crime-round-up
'Here Rogers’s focus is upon the protracted, often puerile fight between the hardened Grub Street professional and a thin-skinned, unforgiving writer.'
Freya Johnston on the time Alexander Pope took on Grub Street.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-writers-revenge