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| Two Caravans | 
 enlarge | Author: Marina Lewycka
Publisher: Viking
Category: Book
Buy Used: £1.35
New (4) from £14.12
Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 349525
Media: Paperback
Edition: Open Market Ed
Pages: 309
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 0670916382
EAN: 9780670916382
ASIN: 0670916382
Publication Date: October 4, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
 Great start ruined by a very disappointing second half September 24, 2008
I really enjoyed the first half of this book and found it unputdownable but the second half monumentally lost it's way. Parts of the second half were so depressing I almost had to give up reading the book.
Characters who were intriguing that I had engaged with suddenly disappeared never to be heard from again, the plot became tenuous and unbelievable. New characters were introduced who were never properly explained before disappearing just as quickly. Incidents that appear to be about to be developed into plot twists also tail off into nothing.
The ending is also unsatisfying and confusing - this really is one of those books you throw at the wall because the ending is so frustrating - especially if like me you've stayed up very late to finish it!
Interestingly I noticed in the acknowledgements that the author thanks friends for helping her through a 'difficult time'. Without them she says the book would not have been finished and that does make me wonder if this affected the second half of her book.
I wouldn't reccommend this book but I'm looking forwards to Lewycka's next offering hoping she regains her sparkle.
 Two Caravans September 14, 2008
We made the mistake of buying this book and strawberry fields. They are identical except for the title
 One of the best books I've read this year August 26, 2008
I enjoyed 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian', but this was way better. Parts of it made me laugh out loud, and others had me on the verge of tears. To achieve that and to contain enough truths [some of them very uncomfortable] to make the reader think as well takes a very talented writer.
Andriy's attempt to track down 'Vagvaga Riskegipd' was a stroke of pure genius. Despite being a Russian-speaker, I was halfway through the book before it dawned on me why an English girl would have such a daft name!
Absolutely brilliant, and I recommend it without reservation.
Funny,dark, but very good....ENJOY! August 16, 2008
If this is modern England told through the eyes of an Eastern european immigrant, we are in far more trouble than we realise. In fact I think this story is far closer to reality than many of us leading comfortable English lives would ever like to imagine. Yet for all those dark thoughts, this book is funny, well told, beautifully characterised, superbly observed, and truly a lovely story. Her first book "tractors" was a wonderful story, "caravans" is every bit as good, if not better. Enjoy! I did!
stay off the strawberries in future August 11, 2008
Two Caravans is the tricky follow-up title to a first hit - how did she get on?
Well it's a fairly hair-raising read, I think. It's about a group of foreign strawberry pickers who've been trafficked to a really disgusting farm somewhere in Kent where they are being completely exploited by being charged loads for the rental of the two caravans where they live and for the lousy food the farmer supplies.
Things get even worse when the horrible lechy head trafficker decides he fancies Irina, the prettiest young Ukrainian. She flees him and his gun in the night, getting lost somewhere in the middle of huge fields in a genuinely tense passage.
But it's also got a kind of comic road trip theme, as the other pickers set off in the caravan to try to change their destiny in the UK back to what they'd hoped it might be before arriving. This sometimes turns out badly - they get fleeced at more than one point - and sometimes pretty well.
There are many things I could say about this book, but here's just two: 1) I've never read a book about the lives of people working such low-wage jobs before (maybe just articles in the Guardian) and it was eye-opening and good. 2) I'm never eating an English supermarket strawberry again.
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