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Strawberry Fields (Hardcover)

by Marina Lewycka (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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2 used from CDN$ 14.48

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Product Details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Viking Canada; First Edition edition (Aug 21 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670066850
ISBN-13: 978-0670066858

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #184,973 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

U.K.-based Lewycka, a Booker and Orange Prize nominee for 2005's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, follows up with a Chaucer-inspired tale of migrant workers trapped at global capital's thuggish bottom. After being helped into England by men like Vulk, an armed, lecherous creep of indeterminate former east bloc origins, a disparate group of strawberry pickers begins a pilgrimage-like search for labor across the countryside after their philandering boss is run over and crippled by his wife. Among them are two Ukrainians: Irina, a naïve teenager from Kiev, and Andriy, a former coal miner. After a brief stop in Canterbury, the workers—from Malawi, China, Malaysia and elsewhere—arrive in Dover with their loyal dog. There, they unexpectedly meet shady recruitment consultant Vitaly, who promises jobs in the dynamic resurgence of the poultry industry. The plot moves slowly, and things get worse for the group. Lewycka doesn't have a perfect command of all the cultures she aims to represent, making some of her satires broad and unfunny. There are, however, captivating scenes (some not for the squeamish), and many of the characters are complex and multifaceted, Irina and Andriy in particular. As a send up of capitalism's grip on the global everyman, Lewycka's ensemble novel complements Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Janice Kulyk Keefer, author or THE LADIES LENDING LIBRARY and THIEVES

'With guts and gusto, "Strawberry Fields" mixes romance and burlesque, social satire and political allegory to recount the adventures of a twenty-first century crew of Innocents Abroad: not American tourists, this time, but Eastern European, Chinese, and African migrant laborers let loose in an England where not only strawberries but chicken concentration camps and the sex-slave trade flourish. All the delightful ingredients of Lewycka's first novel are here in spades: irreverent and bawdy humour, a wry, yet tender understanding of the workings of the human (and now canine) heart, auto mechanics, and a sobering awareness of how history--especially the tenaciously tragic history of countries like Ukraine--can shape and break our lives. Linking the trials and tribulations of a pair of star-crossed lovers with the violent effects of runaway capitalism and ruthless globalisation, "Strawberry Fields" packs a lot of protein beside the sweets it so succulently proffers.'

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "We are all God's creatures", Aug 28 2007

By	Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Weaving a Pandora's box of themes and ideas into her novel, Marina Lewycka's Strawberry Fields begins in a field in rural England where a group of immigrant seasonal agricultural workers spend their days picking ripening strawberries on a ramshackle farm. Run by the officious Farmer Leapish, the farm has workers that have come from all corners of the world, including Poland Ukraine, Africa and China.

Supervised by the bossy Yola, whose main aim is to ensure that this community lives in sexual harmony, the farm is a hardscrabble world where the women always earn less than the men and where Leapish is more concerned with working with the grain of human nature to maximize both productivity and yield, than to look after the well-being of his employees.

Apart from the officious Yola the collection of workers is varied and eclectic. There's Yola's big nosed niece Marta, and two Chinese girls, and also Irina who has just arrived from Kiev, tired and disheveled, "with a faint whiff of chip fat about her." Meanwhile, the poor forty-something Thomasz, with hair to his shoulders and stringy beard, feels as though his life is just slipping away, even as Emanuel an African catholic lyrically sings his religious songs.

Orbiting all of them is Andriy, a miner's son from Donbas still haunted by the mine disaster in which he survived but where his beloved father died. What at first seems like a mild infatuation with the pure and rather snobbish Irina soon develops into a full blown romance as all of the workers are forced to flee after an accident leaves Leapish injured and Yola worrying about the police.

What develops is a type of road story, part of a clever plot that twists and turns as this group of characters travel all over the United Kingdom working in nursing homes and restaurant kitchens and getting themselves involved in all sorts of misadventures, especially when they reconnect with fellow strawberry picker Vitaly who has dissolved into a new smoothly confident businessman who now slips effortlessly between Polish and English.

A shady "recruitment consultant," Vitaly offers up "dynamic employment solutions," convincing his colleagues that working in such places as a chicken processing plant will finally give them all the opportunity to earn plenty of "good English money." Things, however, fall apart, and the delicate balance of the group is upset when Irina is separated from Andriy and she goes on the run and outside of everything in a world where nobody wants her.

Meanwhile, the poor Andriy accompanied by his pet dog, is constantly consumed by the memories his dead dad and the fact that all his dreams and ideals are dead with him, the solidarity, humanity, and the self-respect in this new world that is now run by entrepreneurial "mobilfonmen."

When they finally goes their separate ways, we get to see their true resourcefulness as they eat what they can and sleep where they lay, and what ensues is a complicated brew of exploitation as the new arrivals, the confused, the desperate, and the greedy are taken advantage by all of these self-made middle men who tap into other people's labor, and get rich on harvesting the efforts these innocent fragments of globalized labor.

The novel is intricately structured as Lewycka weaves in her characters' Ukrainian past with their lives on the run. She also constantly introduces new characters like the disgusting farm owner Boris, who tries to seduce Irina in exchange for work, covering her with slimy kisses, and Neil, who works at the chicken processing plant, laughing and joking in front of Thomasz as he slaughters the animals that submit meekly to the daily horror while packed in a small stinking room.

Others are like Vulk, who wears a horrible black fake-leather jacket like a comic-strip gangster, and who makes a living exploiting his own kind. As many of these characters spin off into the ether, some meet a nasty end and others help these workers along in their search across the country as they wait for their luck to change or for their time to run out.

The journey of these workers is certainly defined with momentary triumphs and false steps and the book emerges as a type of guide for new immigrants who are intent to do battle in this newly formed global economy where the West seems intent on abuse and exploitation. Obviously, there are no easy answers to the questions posed in this novel, but the issues give Lewycka a chance to explore, in the sardonic exchanges between the characters, many of the issues that interest her.

If Strawberry Fields sometimes lacks the tightly plotted precision of Lewycka's previous novel, it certainly makes up for it with its ambitious structure. The novel is indeed a complex study of the globalized world and the current labor market in developed counties, and its examination of the many migrant workers and asylum seekers who come from every strife-torn corner makes for a compelling, and at times, absolutely heart-rendering case. Mike Leonard August 07.

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!, Sep 15 2007

By	Marsha Skrypuch (Brantford, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This highly entertaining novel is like a modern Canterbury Tales. Very funny and original. I loved the ever evolving points of view, especially Dog. Reminded me of the Poisonwood Bible -- each character's voice was instantly recognizable.

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