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A review by erdeaka
Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka
4.0
So, this is the second published book written by Marina Lewycka and also her second book I’ve read. After some other books interupting my reading it, now I’ve accomplished my mission to finish this terrific book. Yes, it is as great and smart as her first published novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.
Still talking and focusing on the paradoxical ideas of both capitalism and communism set in England (the land of capitalism) and the-imagined Ukraine, the story of this novel tells about the some immigrants, seemingly illegal, running along England in search of better life. However, they have to admit that they end up only in strawberry-picking land and tight up to tricky greedy evil agents.
There Irina, Andriy, Vitaly, Emmanuel, two Chinese girls from two different countries (China and Malaysia), Marta, Yola, and Tommaz. They all, still with dream of getting better life in a better Western world, live their lives as strawberry-pickers with low wage and many deductions. They have to willingly surrender their lives to the agent arranging thei lives there and sucking their blood (read: money).
Once they can escape, they have to face other challenges and problems surrounding illegal immigrant like them. Separated, desperate, almost caught up, running, all the times like wanted escaped prisoners. The characters of Irina and Andriy have also to endure the inevitable love between them, the love that seems to be hindered by their different points of view about their country Ukraine, which has turned their back to communism.
Like A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, this book is so thought-triggering and painfully laughable. The core of the idea is obviously how, we people living in this world, has been caught between capitalism and communism. It’s like there’s no way out. In capitalism you will be zombies, in communism you will be starving. It also gave me some kind of insights about how it feels like immigrating to England in the hope of getting what we once fancied, but the fact is so painful, especially when we have no legal relation.
This book is just another masterpiece of Marina Lewycka. Very thoughtful, very detail, very smart, very enlightening. I really like her language and how she represents the joke in a quite rude yet naturally funny way. Some people might see it as rubbish, but she is truly a genius author.
Still talking and focusing on the paradoxical ideas of both capitalism and communism set in England (the land of capitalism) and the-imagined Ukraine, the story of this novel tells about the some immigrants, seemingly illegal, running along England in search of better life. However, they have to admit that they end up only in strawberry-picking land and tight up to tricky greedy evil agents.
There Irina, Andriy, Vitaly, Emmanuel, two Chinese girls from two different countries (China and Malaysia), Marta, Yola, and Tommaz. They all, still with dream of getting better life in a better Western world, live their lives as strawberry-pickers with low wage and many deductions. They have to willingly surrender their lives to the agent arranging thei lives there and sucking their blood (read: money).
Once they can escape, they have to face other challenges and problems surrounding illegal immigrant like them. Separated, desperate, almost caught up, running, all the times like wanted escaped prisoners. The characters of Irina and Andriy have also to endure the inevitable love between them, the love that seems to be hindered by their different points of view about their country Ukraine, which has turned their back to communism.
Like A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, this book is so thought-triggering and painfully laughable. The core of the idea is obviously how, we people living in this world, has been caught between capitalism and communism. It’s like there’s no way out. In capitalism you will be zombies, in communism you will be starving. It also gave me some kind of insights about how it feels like immigrating to England in the hope of getting what we once fancied, but the fact is so painful, especially when we have no legal relation.
This book is just another masterpiece of Marina Lewycka. Very thoughtful, very detail, very smart, very enlightening. I really like her language and how she represents the joke in a quite rude yet naturally funny way. Some people might see it as rubbish, but she is truly a genius author.