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| Two Caravans | 
 enlarge | Author: Marina Lewycka
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
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Avg. Customer Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 1696
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0141026995
EAN: 9780141026992
ASIN: 0141026995
Publication Date: March 5, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 great read. touching and funny March 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed her first book and this one doesn't disappoint. The characters are great. I only wish it had been longer and a little more developed. I was sorry to say goodbye to the earlier characters.
Chickens and strawberrys will never taste the same December 31, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This novel offers a superb insight into many things, specifically the pitiful and vulnerable life of people who come to the UK trying to earn a bit of money and being brutally ripped-off in the process. I loved the fact that one of the characters, in fact the great hero of this story, was a dog. This novel is highly amusing and will keep you going until the end. I am a very picky, fussy reader, but I do recommend this one.
 Atmosphere just right, plot and characterisation a bit weak December 4, 2007
As someone working professionally on issues facing migrant workers, I approached this second novel from Marina Lewycka with eager anticipation. In terms of capturing the vulnerable migrant labourer's lot, the book chimes with elements I know - the not infrequently gouging employer, the cheek-by-jowl lives in substandard accommodation - to create a credible mood to the novel. It's unfortunate, then, that the plot and characterisation didn't quite live up to the ambience. Some characters - frustratingly - disappear halfway through without really developing, almost as though the author didn't quite know what to do with them. Others lurch from one appalling job to another - the poultry processing plant was a magnificently drawn, many-circled Dante-esque hell, both for the chickens and the workers. Characters undergo crises: in some cases these are poorly signposted in advance, although the malevolence of pursuing traffickers keeps things moving along tautly enough. In short, a memorable, even gripping read, but one that ultimately comes up some way short of perfection.
good read, but leaves questions November 23, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Marina Lewycka's 'two caravans' differs greatly to her previous novel, as she provides a differnt dimension to our insight into the lives and stories of ukrainian immigrants. The style of writting is similar, while the format of the work is in places a little harder to follow. The main characters are well developed, although as a reader we are left wondering what became of them once they left the narrative (for example it would of been nice to learn what became of the chinese girls).
I found the dogs interuptions to the narrative obscure, and unnecessary, as they added little to the story, however it did act to highten his silence at the last when we are reminded that the dog is in the end, just a dog.
the book gives a good social commentry on the struggles facing immigrant workers, and a shocking display of what goes on when nobody is watching. i guess the end is indicitive of the life they lead, the destination is never the finale and contacts are lost along the way. the reader is left with many questions about the fate of the people they grow to know through the book, and although first striking me as a fault, this could in many ways be considered a virtue of Lewycka's writting, as to give a clear cut definitive ending would not be compatible with life, the very thing the novel portrays.
overall a good book that makes you think, but as a reader we are left with many unanswered questions.
 Waste of a good idea November 16, 2007
5 out of 13 found this review helpful
It is a great idea for a story - a novel about the lives of migrant workers in the UK. It's an important modern issue, relevant and topical, something educated readers are interested to get insight into, with plenty of scope for real, powerful drama and also humour. So it's something of an achievement, given such a gift of a topic, to have produced such a dreadful book.
Two Caravans is, I'm sorry to say, poor. I enjoyed the author's first novel, 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian', and was therefore very disappointed by this one. It seems like an awful waste of a good opportunity to write a really powerful, hard hitting, thought provoking novel.
From the beginning, the writing is confused and disjointed. It jumps from one point of view to another every few paragraphs, also chopping from first to third person and jumping around in time. I found it very difficult to keep the thread even though I was reading full chapters at a time. The characters are introduced hurriedly and many of them dispatched of almost as quickly. Despite the fact that they should have been interesting and sympathetic given their circumstances, I couldn't have cared less about any of them. They were flat, dimensionless and sketchy.
Rather than establishing her group of characters and their circumstances carefully, Lewycka has barely introduced them before drastically altering their circumstances. This means the reader has no sense of the upheaval they feel and no investment in the characters to want to see what happens next.
Plotwise, despite the seriousness of the issues, events are often silly, even farcical. The impression is that Lewycka couldn't decide whether to write a serious novel or a slapstick comedy, and disasterously attempts to go for both at once. There's a lot of reliance on ridiculous coincidence and improbable behaviour. I found the silliness which some of the situations are dealt with rather distasteful, as it undermines the grim seriousness of the reality. I'm sure this wasn't the author's intention, but that is the result.
Probably the strongest part of the story is the section where some of the workers are sent to a poultry processing plant. The descriptions of the appalling conditions are vivid and gruesome and, sadly, almost certainly accurate. If only the rest of the book could have been written to that standard. Fortunately our plucky Poles are rescued in utterly improbable circumstances, and it's downhill from then on.
I can't really imagine anyone enjoying this mess of a book, although clearly some readers have. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, even if you did enjoy the author's previous work. I guess I'll just have to hope that a decent author writes something worth reading on this very important modern issue. Sadly, 'Two Caravans', isn't it.
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