Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka

When I walk into a bookstore, 7 out of 10 times I'll look for a light-hearted & funny book. Life is already too serious, so 'heavy' reading is something I do only once in a while. Anyway, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian was good, so I looked forward to Two Caravans, the second novel by Marina Lewycka.

Two Caravans tells the story of a small group of migrant workers working on a strawberry farm in England in search of a better life. The male workers stay in one cramped caravan, and the women bunk in the other. One day, a particularly crazy event that involved the kidnapping of one of the girls and an enraged farmer resulted in this ragtag group of friends escaping in one of the caravans. In their search for the kidnapped girl and another line of work, they meet all sorts of people and get exploited by some really unscrupulous characters along the way.

The quotes on the cover of the book proclaim that it's a funny story, and though it is at times, there's some serious and disturbing commentary on the plight of migrant workers and work practices in England. It made me wonder about the foreign workers here in Singapore and also what a McNugget is really made of (the gang end up processing chickens when they leave the strawberry farm). Two caravans has a much bigger cast than Tractors - Ukrainians, Poles, Chinese, an African and even a dog. Because there is a little back story to almost everyone, there is less character development and so the characters are not as likable as, say, Papa from Tractors. But you gain interesting insight into Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine) as well as the lesser known effects of capitalism and globalisation.

I shall endeavour to quote my favourite lines from the books I read from now onwards. Here are 2 memorable ones from Caravans (not quite quote-worthy, but it did leave an impression):

How can love be perfect, when people aren't perfect?

There's a special sadness at the end of a journey. For it's only when you get to your destination that you discover the road doesn't end here after all.

Book ninja rating: 7 out of 10 tessen

"The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis

"The Screwtape Letters" (henceforth shortened to "TSL") is the second book I read by Lewis with religion as the theme. Unlike "Essays on Christanity" where Lewis wrote from the standpoint of the converted, TSL is a wittily-contrived book whereby Lewis adopted the persona of a character from Hell in the shape of Screwtape. The latter is a high-ranking servant of the Enemy (i.e. the Devil) and TSL is essentially a collection of letters written by him to his nephew, Wormwood, a neophyte tempter who is trying to convert humans to the dark side.

By turns gloating, counselling, and offering advice, Screwtape endeavours to teach Wormwood how to successfully tempt his designated victim through the machinations of pride, envy, despair to turn from hope, love, community and family. In the last letter, Screwtape eventually turns on his nephew, who had let his victim get away.

From a purely 'read-for-interest' standpoint, the book's an entertaining and easy read, inducing many moments where I smiled to myself on reading Screwtape's advice to Wormwood to exploit the circumstances to profit.

Rating: 4 geek points out of 5 (witty, provoking, satiric!)

"The Beautiful & Damned" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Like "The Great Gatsby", "The Beautiful and Damned" is a novel about America and explores social themes like decadence, morality, relationships, marriages, and american society in the 1920s.

The foreword explains that this novel is largely autobiographical in nature, modeled after Fitzgerald's own relationship and marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald, and is incarnated by the 2 protaganists Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, in the novel. Anthony is the heir presumptive to a large fortune which he thereotically will come into after the passing of his grandfather, the great reformer Adam Patch. In my opinion, this expectation of coming into a fortune is to be his undoing, as he flits from one meaningless existence to another, never seriously making much of his life. In his wastrel existence, Anthony is the very antithesis of Adam Patch -- the latter a self-made, rigid man driven by his passion to reform and annihilate the excesses of society -- and he embodies all the very destructive elements that his grand-pater is striving to overcome.

Throughout his life, Anthony lives for the moment. One day he meets Gloria and the two fall in love before eventually getting married. Sharing a common love of parties, booze and spending money, Anthony and Gloria also abhor responsibility and go to great lengths to avoid thinking about it, even if it is to their very detriment. In the first few years of their marriage, they spend beyond their means, make wrong investments and whittle away what little money they have, always postponing accountability to the next day.

Matters come to a head one day when Adam Patch walks in on one of their numerous scenes of dissipation, and in his death, disowns them without leaving a sou to their name. Not surprisingly the couple decided to contest the will. The outcome of the legal battle was to last a few years, with Anthony leaving to go to war in the interim. At the close of the story, he cuts a sorry figure as a character fully in the grip of alcohol addiction. Just in case you are wondering, he did win the lawsuit, but I think it matters little.

Frankly I wouldn't go so far as to say I enjoyed the book, which for me is a trifle too long. Then again it could also be because I was never partial to American Literature -- notwithstanding the fact that I probably have this genre to thank for for my exemplary English grade in school -- with its melancholic, "one-hero straining to find his own identity in the midst of society" type of moralising.

Be that as it may, I do think there are areas of interest that have the capacity to set one thinking within this book. At the broad level, the depiction of American society in the jazz age with its wastes, excesses and a society's search for a moral conscience is one; one can also look at the relationship angle and either explore the richness of how Fitzgerald has portrayed the inter-relationships of the characters or how art has closely mirrored this fictional world by comparing Anthony and Gloria to his own relationship with Zelda. Further, one can also enjoy the particular genius of Fitzgerald in skillfully combining out-and-out hedonism and cowardly inertia in one character. The latter is the mould I am inclined to see the story cast in, and because of that, my reactions towards the book are ambivalent. For Anthony is not the prototype of the proverbial hero, but neither is he a villain. He is simply a flawed man with his weaknesses thrown into sharp relief by being cast as the main character in this book. To top it off, there is no closure at the end of the story, merely a sad figure of a man who seems destined to continue living out the rest of his days as an empty shell.

Depressing.

Geek Rating: 3 out of 5

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Nadia Mayevskyj's 84 year old father has decided to remarry, and he has gotten his two daughters into a tizzy. His bride-to-be, Valentina, is a 36 year old voluptuous gold-digger from Ukraine and she's out to get her claws on what little fortune 'Papa' has, along with an easy visa to the UK.
Nadia and her older sister Vera put aside their longstanding feud to unite against the blood sucking Valentina. They try all ways and means to stop the marriage, but in the end...the marriage went ahead. (It only gets funnier after that)
The cheeky old man at first enjoys having a young wife to grope and feel, all whilst he starts to write a book on the history of tractors, but Valentina's ridiculous demands start to make Papa think twice about his lust-driven decision. Her bullying got so fearsome that it made him perform involuntary excretion in his trousers more than once.
I bought Tractors cos I figured it'd be a funny book. It definitely is, but it can be insightful and touching as well. The author weaves in the struggles of Nadia's family in Ukraine , and the dark days spent in a labour camp during WWII. All in all, it makes for a good read! 7.5 out of 10 ninja darts.

"The Ladies of Grace Adieu & Other Stories" by Susanna Clarke

The book contains a collection of eight short stories revolving around magic.

(To be frank, I am rather at a loss for what to say next about this book.)

Aside from the first story "the Ladies of Grace Adieu", I found precious little to enjoy about this book.

I reckon that's due to the short story form, in which too little of plot and storyline is developed for me to term it a satisfactory reading. Two stories carried faint echoes of stories I have read/heard before, further diluting the novelty factor for me.

Still I ploughed through the book. Finishing it, I found little to recommend, save to say that if you are the type who just wants to read for a short span of time, and expect that your next reading of the book will be very much in the unforeseeable future, then read this book, because the short story and independent stories will stand you in good stead.

Geek rating: 2 out of 5 stars