Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka - review by Kate Saunders

Kate Saunders

Solidarity Hall

Various Pets Alive and Dead

By

Fig Tree 367pp £12.99
 

Marina Lewycka is one of those novelists whose reviews never quite reflect their huge popularity with actual readers. I managed to miss her bestselling A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, but I did review her second novel, Two Caravans, and found it tiresomely filled with warmth, ‘uplift’, slightly twee humour, and all the other elements that make up your classic, comfy book-club read. 

Various Pets Alive and Dead is another irritatingly cosy title, and the publishers are very keen to sell it to us as a hilarious domestic comedy. This novel, however, contains a lot more roughage than Two Caravans. Lewycka is exploring the tension between individual morality and the

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

RLF - March

A Mirror - Westend

Follow Literary Review on Twitter