bookpagedev

Forget what you think you know about relationships. Better yet, forget what you think you know about your friends, your lovers and especially your family. As Sarah Stonich proves in her second novel, when it comes to affairs of the heart, there are no rules. We meet Liselle “Lise” Dupre in the midst of crisis. She has abruptly left her beloved son and estranged husband in Toronto to start anew in a tiny village on Ireland’s western coast. Lise’s fractured, yet visceral memories reveal an affair with an exotic, brilliant Welsh painter, Charlie, who loved her more passionately than her husband ever could; a married life of utter complacency with her workaholic husband, Stephen; and a tortured relationship with her long-deceased and falsely revered father. In Ireland, with the help of her quirky, yet loving new friends, the Conner family, Lise must come to grips with the mistakes she’s made, the decisions ahead of her and the woman she ultimately wants to become. Blurring the lines between art and narrative, Stonich allows Lise’s affair with Charlie to come to life through the sensuality of his paintings, just as she skillfully explores the Conner family through Lise’s creation of a documentary film about them. There’s Remy, the spirited patriarch who marries his true love, no matter what other people think of her; his son, Danny, who never overcomes the heartache of losing his wife; and Siobhan, the rebellious granddaughter who puts love above all else, and learns the consequences. With each story, Lise gains a new perspective on the Conners and finally begins to look inward, turning the camera on herself. With meticulously delicate prose, Stonich tells a multifaceted story of love and loss, the comforts of home and the virtues of travel, and, perhaps more than anything, the complexities of every human relationship. An aesthetic triumph with real heart, The Ice Chorus will leave you feeling warm. Abby Plesser studies English at Vanderbilt University.

Don’t let the title of Marina Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian deceive you rather than an account of the development of farm equipment, it is a debut novel centered on the dilemma two estranged sisters face when their elderly ŽmigrŽ father falls in love with a gold-digging Ukrainian bombshell. However, tractor enthusiasts need not despair embedded in the novel is the father’s magnum opus, after which the book is named.

The author, who herself was born to Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp and grew up in England, vividly depicts the life of Nadezhda, a sociology professor (thought by her entire family to be a social worker) whose 84-year-old father plans to marry the buxom 36-year-old Valentina in order to save her from a miserable life in the old country. When Nadezhda’s na•ve hopes that the marriage will bring her father happiness in his old age are dashed, she and her sister Vera (with whom she has not spoken since their mother’s death two years before) join forces to separate the unhappy couple. In doing so, they must scheme to send Valentina and her son back to the Ukraine while fending off their father’s pleas for money to support Valentina’s automobile addiction and his lecherous comments about the “superiority” of her figure.

Lewycka brings humor to the struggles of immigration and the difficulties inherent in the shift between the communist and capitalist ways of life, while maintaining gravity in her description of Nadezhda’s family’s escape to England. The lingual and cultural differences between the Ukraine and England provide many laughs, and Valentina, whose obsession with material possessions seems to be only an exaggeration of the materialism that has long existed in the West, is a villain the reader loves to hate. A quick, light story with flamboyant characters and a unique cultural framework, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a good choice for any reader who enjoys tales of family drama.

Emily Zibart writes from New York City.