One of the wonderful things about writing is that the idea you start out with is not necessarily the one that gets written. The characters have which were quite poor. But like many immigrants, my parents believed that hard work and education were the keys to success in our new world. I am Her name is Valentina, he tells me. But she is more like Venus. "Botticelli's Venus rising from waves. Golden hair. Charming eyes. Superior breasts. When you see her you will understand." Q. There is a wonderful use of hybrid language in the book, dialogue that is a combination of Ukrainian and English. Did you spend some time listening to people who talk like this or did this voice come naturally to you? Do you have favorite phrases, or ones that you yourself use in your everyday life?

I think this book goes one step further. Although there might be happiness and unhappiness in this family, I don't think they stop to think and dwell on it that much. It isn't a cause of self-pity. They just get on with their lives in a relentless way. Nadia's vibrant voice, knowing, self-deprecating and witty, acts as both guide and interpreter for her complicated and sometimes outrageous family. Vera and Nadia decide to let go of, and which begin to seem less important? Have you ever had a conflict with a family member that you couldAs a child, I was too busy trying to adapt and fit in to give much thought to my Ukrainian roots. Besides, my parents always told me that they were

What do you think Valentina's real motives are? Does she really want the best possible life for her son, is she simply after money, or does At the beginning, Valentina was more of a caricature, but as I fell in love with her, I tried to understand who she really was, and how she came to be as she It also bothered me, quite a bit, that the entire dialogue was in broken, choppy English. Even when, presumably, the people speaking would be doing so in Ukrainian and would have no reason whatsoever to sound like they're two days off the boat. I mean, are we really expected to think that the father and Valentina would be yelling in English at each other? His two feuding daughters realize they must unite to free their father from the clutches of Valentina, a Ukrainian bombshell and "boil-in-the-bag Every language has its figures of speech and imagery which we take so much for granted that we hardly notice, but translated into a foreign language they

How many of these 100 Novels have you read?

A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian is advertised as being an extremely comical take on family drama. The latter I can agree with. The former, maybe not so much. I had a few smiles, sure. But I never laughed out loud, which is my (maybe unnecessarily high standard) definition of a truly humorous novel. It was, however, a portrayal of the ridiculousness of the green card process (if the amount of marriages bought with the sole purpose of citizenship is any indication) and the inherent obstacles in immigrating here that took a comical rather than serious angle, making this, overall, a short, lighthearted read. like the last. My parents hadn't talked to me about the hardships they had lived through. But a couple of years before my mother died, I did talk

really enjoyed about writing this book is being able to put all those unacceptable thoughts into words: the rows and arguments, the uninhibited She knows nothing of history., even less about the recent past."Though much is made of this here (especially in contrast to the lost mother, a remarkable hoarder essentially defined by history), but not enough. As a child, I was too busy trying to adapt and fit in to give much thought to my Ukrainian roots. Besides, my parents always told me that they were the only survivors in our family; everyone who had stayed behind in Ukraine, they believed, must have perished in the war. So I thought of myself as a bit of human flotsam washed up on a faraway shore. And alongside all the old sepia photographs, some colour snaps of my new Ukrainian family: my cousin Marina, who is the daughter of my father's than others? Consider some of the times in which she seems to analyze circumstances more as a professional and others in which she responds less

over there! Photos of my parents as children and later as young adults. How familiar and yet how different they looked, in their quaint 1930s-style