Strangers No Longer On The Road To Love

Sun Herald

Sunday February 11, 2007

Bron Sibree

Marina Lewycka's latest work takes a wry, sly look at the plight of those who do England's dirty work, Bron Sibree writes.

MARINA Lewycka doesn't believe in being too solemn about writing. For years, the author of one of the funniest, most poignant bestselling novels of 2005-2006, A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian, attempted to write "serious, change the world" stuff.

And for years she endured rejection. "I have at least 36 rejections in my collection," she announces with a tinge of pride.

But something happened between clocking up rejection slips and the daily toil of lecturing in media studies at Sheffield Hallam University, says Lewycka, whose comic novel about immigration and the new global economic order, Two Caravans, is released this month.

"I changed. It's one of those things. As I got older I guess my innate frivolity came out. I think I always had a funny streak in me, but I don't think I ever quite gave myself permission to be funny before. I thought you had to be serious."

For this 60-year-old Ukrainian-born Englishwoman, the turning point in unleashing her comedic streak came when, tired of writing novels that were rejected, she took on the task of writing non-fiction books about caring for the elderly and, in the process, interviewed countless elderly people about their lives.

"With the elderly a lot of the reserve vanishes," she explains. "Of course one of the symptoms of Alzheimer's is that people become uninhibited, but to a less extreme, older people reach a point where they realise they've got absolutely nothing to lose."

This rubbed off on Lewycka who, it has to be said, penned a manual on growing old disgracefully and then turned around and wrote A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian , at the age of 57.

Originally an attempt to write her own family history, this wickedly funny comi-tragedy of geriatric desire and sibling rivalry entwined around the dark tragic history of Ukraine was short-listed for the 2005 Orange Prize and took out the 2005 Saga Award for Wit, as well as the 2005 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. It went on to sell 650,000 copies in the UK alone.

Set in Peterborough in the UK, it tells the story of the feuding Mayevska sisters, whose widowed father, 84-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, Nikolai, suddenly announces his plans to marry 36-year-old Valentina - an opportunistic blonde from "the old country" who has "superior breasts".

Along with the unforgettable Valentina, who explodes into the Mayevska family's lives like a "fluffy pink grenade", Lewycka's brand of dark comedy exploded across British borders, eventually selling into 29 countries.

Despite being serially lauded for the canny way in which she unravelled the dark history of the Ukrainian famine along with the Mayevska family's secrets - and invented a whole new "DIY language" in the process - Lewycka attributes the book's success largely to the mischievous way it exposed "a world that just doesn't feature in fiction at all".

"The world of the elderly is a completely hidden world," she says. "And yet we're all touched by it. Illness, decrepitude and mental problems are such common themes of human experience and yet they're completely ignored in fiction."

It's no accident, either, she explains, that the notion of drawing attention to another hidden world, the world of cheap immigrant labour, impelled her to write Two Caravans.

A wry, comedic look at the plight of those who do England's dirty work and the quirks of the new global economy, Two Caravans follows the adventures of a group of immigrant strawberry pickers - and a dog.

It leaves behind octogenarian lust and longing, for a romance between two youthful Ukrainian immigrant strawberry pickers, Irina and Andriy, whose tribulations propel the story of Ukraine that she began in the first novel onward past the events of the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005.

But she also gives narrative voice to 10 characters - including two Poles, an African, two Chinese, a Transdniestran, three Ukrainians and, of course, the dog.

The result is not quite the "fast-moving road movie" that Lewycka set out to write, but a novel that has more of what its title implies: the haphazard, irregular gait of a caravan.

From the comic ructions of British strawberry farms manned by mafia-controlled immigrants to the devastating indignities of chicken factories that employ the world's poorest people, Two Caravans proffers a sly, wry, behind the-scenes-vision of an England in full summer bloom. Inspired by and dedicated to immigrant workers in England, Lewycka says the book grew out of a growing awareness of the other world that exists "below the level of the world that we think we live in".

"You take for granted that your food will be put on the table, your house will be decorated or whatever," she says.

"But the workers who actually come along and do the work are immigrants. And the funny thing is you can live in England and be completely unaware of it. I did want to write about that. But I didn't want to write a depressing book.

"In the Tractors book, terrible things happened and millions of people died. But it's a book about survival and triumph and I wanted to get the same kind of spirit across in Two Caravans."

In many ways, says Lewycka, her own intensified awareness of the hidden workforce that powers England grew out of her sense of being an immigrant.

Born in a refugee camp in Kiel toward the end of World War II, Lewycka came to Britain with her parents at 18 months of age. She began the novel to help fill in the gaps in her family history, and in the process, unearthed Ukrainian relatives long given up for dead.

"I was trying to write a family history, but I got hijacked," says Lewycka. "But once you start thinking about that, and research it, you do see yourself as an outsider to the culture that you're in."

Lewycka says she now describes herself as English when abroad, yet feels like "a foreigner" at home. But despite this renewed sense of immigrant identity - heightened through the writing process and the discovery of new relatives - the most significant change in her life is being published.

"It has changed my life from day to day," she says. "I now feel this terrible sense of urgency so I work hours and hours on the writing. At the moment I'm writing number three, which is such fun, but I think I'll do at least five books, maybe more."

Yet those years of rejection and the often-callous manner in which the rejection was conveyed still rankle with Lewycka, who likens the experience of being an unpublished author to that of being an asylum seeker.

"You're on the outside, looking for the key that will open the door," she says, recalling the moment she dared ask for more on her first book deal, but was told she wasn't young or glamorous enough.

"There is still this sense that the big rewards are for the young glamorous writers. I don't want to read something by somebody who is 19 years old and glamorous.

"I think, 'what does that person know about life?' I'm always much more interested in books by older writers.

"And in a funny sort of way being an older less glamorous person has, I think, endeared me to readers more."

Two Caravans is published by Fig Tree, $32.95

© 2007 Sun Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home