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Title: A book of many levels
Review: Having discussed it with several people who have read this book I am even more convinced that it works at several different levels. The first is the British-style comedy, the second is the old man's magnum opus on the history of tractors and the third is the past and continuing impact of the events in the former Soviet Union over the last century on all the main characters. This is seen from a Ukrainian perspective (with slavic dark humour), where Ukraine was not only the founding location of 'Rus' but later the bread basket of the Csarist and Soviet 'Russian' empires. These three levels run in and out of one another, just like real life and that is probably why several people have read the book at least twice. Those critics who have seen it primarily as a sexual farce make the mistake of not reading deeper. The beauty of the prose should lead them to do this, but it is such a page turner that I can understand why they might miss it.
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