Written by Marina Lewycka
Ms. Lewycka made a spectacular & hilarious impression on me with here acclaimed first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. Her follow-up novel is nearly as wonderful, with a single caveat.
Strawberry Fields is a novel that accurately captures so much that is true about the new Europe. The plight of Eastern European immigrants — both legal and illegal, the victimization & exploitation of younger immigrants (especially women), the attitudes of the English to the first mass immigration into their country in nearly five hundred years…characters and situations in this novel speak to the reader with such authenticity, at times you believe that you’re actually watching a top-flight BBC television show, and not reading a novel. Writing this evocative doesn’t come along very often.
As a Pole who knows all about this situation, and someone who understands completely the attitude towards eastern immigrants, and the debates that rage between themselves regarding Russian vs. western influences, this novels speaks to me in an even more powerful way. My own trips to England and Poland over the last five years have brought home to me some of the seismic changes that have been occuring in these once-homogeneous societies. Anthropology doesn’t always make good fiction, but it certainly sings in Strawberry Fields.
My only real complaint is that the novel creates such a family atmosphere of characters in its first half…and then ditches most of them halfway through. While I’m not complaining about who we’re left with, it seems a waste (and a bloody great shame) to invest in so many lovely characters, only to have them exit the story so quickly…and I certainly missed their input into some of the crazy situations involved in the later journeys to London and Sheffield. Luckily, the remaining adventures of Andriy, Irina & Dog (who actually get moments of hilarious & pointed animal p.o.v’s) never disappoint.
Strawberry Fields comes highly recommended…a poignant, hilarious, fascinating snap shot into a changing world.
