by Marina Lewycka
ages: adult
First sentence: “Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcee.”
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I really wanted to like this book. I’d heard good things about it, or at the very least okayish things. I picked it up at a Friends of the Library sale back in June, I think, and it’s been languishing on my TBR pile since then. I just really couldn’t get excited by the cover. Or the title. Or the back blurb. In fact, if it hadn’t have been one I’d chosen for the 2010 Challenge, I probably would have passed on it altogether.

As it turns out, I’m pretty much passing on it anyway. After one hundred pages, I was still wondering what the point was. I threw a feeler out on Twitter, and SuziQ at Whimpulsive bit: she said it was weird. And I had to agree.

The basic plot: two sisters, daughters of Ukrainian immigrants, are feuding after their mother’s death. Then their 84-year-old father falls in love (or lust), with a blond, 36-year-old Ukrainian divorcee (perhaps; I never could quite figure out if she really was) who’s using him to gain citizenship to the UK. This, of course, leads to tension between the dad and the daughters, which, interestingly enough, manages, in the end, to bring the family back together. Or, so I gathered.

See, I didn’t finish it really. I read the first 100 pages or so, then flitted about a bit, and then read the last 50. And I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t like the characters, didn’t sympathize with them (differing life situations, and I just wasn’t interested in their whining and moaning), and I was bored by the book. I have wondered, off and on, if too much YA has spoiled me for adult fiction; the pace was glacially slow; I kept wondering how on earth Lerwycka was going to fill 300 pages. Was there really that much story? I’m not sure there was.

But, obviously, I’m missing something here; it’s one of those that was nominated for a Man Booker Prize. And, obviously, I have different expectations from books than those who are on the Man Booker Prize committee.

Can’t say I’m too sorry about that.