Description
The author tells the story of two sisters, Vera and Nadezhda, who are feuding over their father's love interest, Valentina. 50 years ago, their mother died and their father remarried. Valentina comes into their lives and stirs up some old memories. The sisters must put their differences aside and work together to get rid of Valentina. The author does a great job of capturing the flavor of Eastern European immigrant life. The story is funny, touching, and completely convincing.
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth...
'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.' Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget...
Review:
More than just a jolly romp with political undertones is the way it captures the peculiar flavour of Eastern European immigrant life ... a very rich mixture indeed, as well as very enjoyable reading The Times A delightful first novel ... an understanding of history, a profundity, and yet a lightness of touch, that are a joy ... funny, touching and completely convincing The Spectator
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