We are very sorry but we have yet to review this book ourselves. However, as was selected for the Man Booker 2005 long list, we wanted to give you the opportunity to download an extract and let you make up your own mind.

Comparison: David Nobbs, Tom Sharpe, Sue Townsend
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Synopsis

'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukranian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.'

When their recently-widowed father announces he plans to remarry, sisters Vera and Nadezhda realise they must put aside a lifetime of feuding in order to save him. His new love is a voluptuous gold-digger from the Ukraine half his age, with a proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, who stops at nothing in her single-minded pursuit of the luxurious Western lifestyle she dreams of. But the old man, too, is pursuing his eccentric dreams – and writing a history of tractors in Ukrainian.

A wise, tender and deeply funny novel about families, the healing of old wounds, the trials and consolations of old age and – really - about the legacy of Europe’s history over the last fifty years.

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About the Author

Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the war, and grew up in England. She teaches at Sheffield Hallam University. She is married, with a grown-up daughter, and lives in Sheffield. Photograph © Sonia Lewycka   More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation