I picked up this book while I was reading Detransition, Baby as I felt I needed something to counter-balance it. In truth, I am not sure what I needed as I also started reading The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture... I felt hesitant of the Tractor book as I am always slightly suspicious of too many and too emphatic accolades but my doubts dispersed on page 2: ‘”Thirty-six. She’s thirty-six and I’m eighty-four. So what?” (He pronounces it ‘vat’.)’ The story of an aging father and a Visa-focused Ukrainian (or Russian, it remains unclear) divorced bombshell of a mother is humorous although I found it tragic at times as the father got physically attacked and abused. I had to distance myself from those events and remind myself that the story is a hyperbole in every sense and that is why his daughters stand on the sidelines watching...

The characters are full-bloodied and well-drawn, I could see exactly whom I would get along with and whom I would need to avoid. I learnt something about tractors and something about Ukraine and also the UK immigration system.

The story just flows and I found myself fully immersed and invested in all the events, including the tractor book writing. I appreciated the complicated relationship between the two daughters and how it was used to introduce their different life experiences and through them the history of their family and their country of origin. It felt very effortless and smooth while providing a clear foundation for each of the daughter’s flaws and virtues.

Each character was also identified and presented through the clothes they chose to wear and that was another dimension that added to their ‘reality’ and colourfulness. Peach-pink for Valentina – the bomb and Oxfam-bought clothes for Nadezhda – the social worker.

It is both heart-warming and blood-curdling, everyday and extraordinary, educational and hilarious. Neither of the aspects diminishes or dominates the others – it is a perfectly balanced and elegantly written book that will lift your spirit and teach you about tractors as if that were exactly what was missing from your life...

And now I may as well be included in the cover blurbs.