Great book. The characters are a little stereotypical and the narrator's behaviour struck me as odd but the story kept me reading on. The story explores topics that interest me in reading material: old age, what old people were like before they were old and the secrets they keep, where old peop...
Strange book. Some of it was all Bridget Jones-style wacky where you have access to the character's inner life, sex life and embarrassments. The whole first part seemed to be about terrible odours, filthy bodies and cat poop (the main character befriends a cat lady). There is then a mystery about...
'We Are All Made of Glue' tells the story of Georgie. Her marriage is crumbling and her relationship with her children is fading away. She meets Mrs Shapiro, an old Jewish woman who befriends her. Mrs Shapiro is admitted into the hospital, and Georgie is named as a relative of hers. Georgie strug...
Doro and Marcus were militant lefties who founded and lived on a Doncaster commune in the seventies. They marched, they demo-ed, they ate vegetables and engaged in free sex. Now, late middle-aged and vaguely connected to current economic reality, they have decided to get married. Meanwhile, their...
A novel about family. Lewycka has once again brought to life brilliantly detailed characters whose individual lives are informed by their shared history. Loved the intricate details Lewycka has sprinkled through the story and tied together. She also did a remarkable job at pointing out the ways i...
I was disappointed with Various Pets. I read We are all Made of Glue a few years ago, which I thought was brilliantly funny. This one is enjoyable enough to read and the characters are easy to warm to. I just never felt engaged enough to really care about the conclusions to their stories, with th...
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian was bestselling author Marina Lewycka's bestselling debut novel which has sold over one million copies worldwide. Lewycka tells the side-splittingly funny story of two feuding sisters, Vera and Nadezhda, who join forces against their father's new, gold-dig...
Also published as Strawberry Fields. The bestselling author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is back with an "effervescent comedy" (The New Yorker) The follow up to her hugely popular first novel presents a Canterbury Tales inspired picaresque that is also a biting satire of econom...
The work was better, the pay was better, the caravans were better. There were facilities—a separate barn with a ping-pong table, a common room, a TV, a phone. Even the strawberries were better, or at least they looked more even in size and colour. And yet each morning since I’d been here, I’d wok...
Violet has already forewarned Human Resources at GRM about a follow-up dental appointment, and meets up with the other residents under the cherry trees at 10 a.m. to march to the Town Hall with their petition. A good forty people have turned out. Mrs Tyldesley, the artist lady, has painted a love...
The inspector from the Immigration Service has come to call. Soon Valentina’s immigration status will be confirmed and their love will be sealed for ever. Without the fear of deportation hanging over them, the cloud of misunderstanding will lift and it will once more be as when they were first in...
A nippy wind flicked my hair against my cheeks and made my batty-woman coat flap against my legs. There were no leaves left on the trees, but tattered shreds of plastic bags fluttered from the branches like pennants, and bits of wind-driven litter skittered along the street in front of me. As I t...