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Outstanding
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The Economist
Thought-provoking, but also uproariously funny... [Lewycka's] dialogue, conducted between educated people who lack a common language, is a comic feast.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Helen Brown
Lewycka's hugely enjoyable and needling book is a marvellous dissection of the eastern European immigrant experience.
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Outstanding
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The Spectator Charlotte Hobson
[A] delightful first novel — with an understanding of history, a profundity, and yet a lightness of touch, that are a joy.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Jessica Mann
The plot is really a vehicle for social satire, some good jokes and an overdose of slapstick. It adds up to a clever, touching story.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Joel Whitney
An ambitious book that boils over with effortless joy and wisdom.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Susan Adams
Charming, poignantly funny.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Rachel Aviv
Their family problems become a cheery parody of the country's political dysfunctions.
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Favorable
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Booklist Elizabeth Dickie
Drawing on her own family, Lewycka has created a funny, tender, and intelligent novel that is as much social history as family saga. It is a delight. [1 Jan 2005, p.820]
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Bella Stander
''There's no fool like an old fool'' appears to be the theme here, but Lewycka skillfully teases out a more complex story, underpinned by Ukraine's horrors under Stalin and Hitler.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
An unusual and poignant novel. [17 Jan 2005, p.33]
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Askold Melnyczuk
A charming comedy of eros. [9 March 2005, p.E4]
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Mixed
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Chicago Tribune Laura Ciolkowski
While the characters in Lewycka's novel are at times immensely entertaining, they never finally become fully three-dimensional, reminding us that, while caricature is part of the fun, especially in the face-off between Valentina and Nikolai, only fully drawn characters could succeed in telling the deeper, richer story of postwar Russia and the immigrant experience in the West that is at the heart of the Mayevskyj family drama. [20 March 2005, p.C4]
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Amanda Heller
[An] awkward yet appealing polyglot farce.
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Mixed
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Houston Chronicle Barbara Liss
Though well-intentioned, the brief passages of tractor history bring the story to a standstill.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Boris Fishman
Lewycka is an awkward stylist, but the irony of Nadezhda's conversion is too obvious to miss. The parental silence that provided Nadezhda with a naive view of the tragic country to the east has also allowed her to shed the prejudices of that country.
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Mixed
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The New Yorker
In the midst of these machinations—which include long-winded letters to solicitors, venomous gossip, and all-out spying—Lewycka stealthily reveals how the depredations of the past century dictate what a family can bear.
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Mixed
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The Independent Emma Hagestadt
Despite Lewycka's robust writing, the will-she-won't-she-stay element of Valentina's story is hard to sustain. The family ends up in court, but the outcome is predictable.
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Unfavorable
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The Guardian Andrey Kurkov
The novel is not so much written as constructed, and the same can be said of the characters. Just about everyone portrayed in it inspires the sympathy of the reader except the Ukrainians, legal and illegal. What we see are caricatures.
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Unfavorable
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The Independent Brandon Robshaw
Lewycka has a number of annoying stylistic tricks, such as making comments on the action in parentheses, or using one-line paragraphs to sum up a scene. The effect, sadly, is of over-obviousness; it's like being nudged in the ribs the whole time.
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