Marina Lewycka – ‘Two Caravans’

And here’s the problem: they all want more – the twenty-pound-note man, Vulk, Vitaly, and all their seedy cohort of clients – they all want what you want. To wash themselves in the sweet pool of her youth. This decent young girl, as fresh as the month of May. And she senses it. No wonder she trembles like a hunted rabbit. No wonder she jumps about all over the place. Leave her alone, Andriy. Be a man. (p. 233)

Andriy gets Irina’s signals typically wrong, in a common enough reversal of Groucho Marx’s most famous saying, amounting to: ‘I can’t believe that any club I want to join would want me as a member’. That passage made me think of Pierre’s attitude to Natasha at the end of volume two of War and Peace, when he recognises that his feelings for her are getting out of hand, and leaves Moscow on a pretext to allow them to simmer down. So I was surprised to turn the page and read:

It was so beautiful, like that bit in War and Peace when Natasha and Pierre finally realise that they’re meant to be together. Except I think he doesn’t realise it yet. (p. 234)

There is a jump in narrator between these two quotations: the first is free indirect speech, from Andriy’s perspective; the second is Irina’s first person narration. Most of the novel is told in this way, flitting between the two Ukrainians who have come to England with high and romantic expectations, only to find themselves picking strawberries with other exploited immigrants, and falling for another Ukrainian. They are the leads – the romantic leads, even – but there are enough other things going on to prevent that story from seeming trite. Other narrators are Emanuel and Dog. Emanuel, from Malawi, writes letters to his sister in King James Bible English:

I am striving with all my might to improve my English but this English tongue is like a coilsome and slippery serpent and I am always trying to remember the lessons of Sister Benedicta and her harsh staff of chastisement. (p. 15)

Dog is a dog, an energetic mongrel (‘Labrador collie, I’d say, with a bit of German shepherd in there too’ (p. 186) is Mr McKenzie’s guess), says – or thinks – things like this:

I WILL BRING THIS FISH LIVE TO MY MAN I WALK BESIDE BIG-WATER THIS WATER IS BAD IT JUMPS AT ME WITH SNAKE NOISE SSSS FEET WET I BARK WOOF OFF I BARK MOUTH OPEN FISH JUMPS OUT OF MOUTH INTO BIG-WATER FLAP FLAP SSSS WOOF FLAP SSSS BIG-WATER SWALLOWS FISH ALL GONE I HAVE NO FISH FOR MY MAN I AM SAD DOG I RUN HOME I AM DOG (p. 114)

Dog has names for people, based mostly on their smell, but the best is ‘MORE-STUPID-THAN-SHEEP-FEMALE’, the name Irina aquires after Dog helps her to escape from Vulk (arch villain and people-trafficker) by barking, blocking her way and forcing her to take the right path.

All of the narrators share a simplicity of style. Their language is clear and concise, situations are conjured with broad strokes which put the reader at ease, complicit in the underlying assumptions. The less information you are given, the more pleased you are that the novel gives you credit for knowing what it leaves out. You are pleased because (it sounds odd to say it) you want the novel to like you. This is how a lot of children’s fiction works, but it is rare in adult fiction. Alexander McCall Smith does it, so does The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. S. pointed out that the point of view of an immigrant has similarities to that of a child: situations are unfamiliar, there is less cultural background to fall back on. This and the characters’ imperfect grasp of English are enough to justify the simple language in the novel’s own terms (although Emanuel not writing to his sister in their own language, Chichewa, is a bit of a stretch). What is remarkable is that it uses these fun, ramshackle characters and their disorganised travels to criticise the state of the nation. What kind of country is this, that is so under the thumb of its own supermarkets that it will illegally employ immigrants for pitiful wages (minus deductions for pitiful food and pitiful accommodation) in order to produce strawberries at the impossibly low prices they set in time for Wimbledon? That’s not civilisation.