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A Novel
by Marina Lewycka
Book Reviewed by:
• • •
Yola’s eyes narrow as she watches the Ukrainian girl wander along the strawberry
rows as if she had all the time in the world to fill those boxes. Out in the
strawberry field it’s the hierarchy of the check-in that matters. Several times
a day, the farmer counts the trays of boxes, checks them in, stacks them on
pallets in the prefab, and notes down who has earned what. The women generally
earn less. The men earn more. The supervisor of course earns the most.
Yola is both the gang mistress and the supervisor. As a former teacher, she is a
person of natural authority and a woman of action. It is her belief that
maintaining a pleasant sexual harmony within the picking team is the key to
success, and for this reason she encourages the men to take their shirts on in
the sun.
She doesn’t want any griping or unpleasant comments behind her back, especially
from those Ukrainians, now that there are two of them. Not that she has anything
against Ukrainians, but it is her belief that the high point of Ukrainian
civilization was its brief occupation by Poland, though the civilizing enects
were clearly quite short-lived and superficial. To be fair, this Ukrainian boy
Andriy is quite a gentleman as well as a good picker, but he is inclined to
moodiness, and he thinks too much. Thinking is not good for a man. He is quite
nice looking, though of course he is much too young for her, and she isn’t the
type of a woman to seduce a boy half her age, though she knows some who would in
Zdroj, which she will tell you about later.
Yes, if only there were more good pickers like that. Nobody understands the
problems she faces, for her pay depends not just on her own enorts but on the
performance of the good-for-nothing team she supervises in the field. She
tells them - but will they listen? - to pick strawberries just right. Too white
and farmer will reject. Too ripe and shops complain. And you have to handle
correctly, and drop gently - don’t throw - into boxes. She tells them, and they
just carry on exactly the same as before. Really, she is getting too old for
this game.
This is her second summer as a supervisor, her seventh summer in England, and
the forty-seventh summer of her life. She is beginning to think she has had
enough. During those seven summers she has picked almost fifty tonnes of
strawberries for the Dumpling, and the income from this, added to the extra sums
paid for additional services of a private nature, have allowed her to buy a
pretty three-roomed bungalow on the outskirts of Zdroj with half a hectare of
garden that leads down to the Prosna River where her son Mirek can potter around
to his heart’s content. She has a photo in her purse of Mirek in the garden
sitting on a rope swing that hangs from the branch of a cherry tree in full
blossom. Ah, those little smiling eyes! When he was born, she had to make a
di≈cult choice - give up her job or put him in an institution. Well, she has seen
those institutions, thank you very much. Then someone at the school said they
were recruiting strawberry pickers for England, and her sister said she would
look after Mirek for the summer, so she seized the opportunity. And what woman
of action but of limited choices would not do the same?
Last autumn she invested some of her strawberry money in a pair of Masurian
goats and this year there are two snow white kids running about in the garden,
bleating, jumping over each other, nibbling at the dahlias, and generally
causing mayhem. She was thinking of those kids as she lay on the straw in the
back of the Dumpling’s Land Rover last night looking up at the swaying roof,
while he toiled and puned away above her. And she smiled to herself and let out
some delightful bleating noises, which the Dumpling mistook for cries of
pleasure.
Usually Yola brings a team of pickers she has recruited locally in Zdroj, for
there were always people desperate for a bit of cash since they closed the
millinery factory, but this year nobody wanted to come, because now Poland is
in Europe Marketing why should they work for that kind of money when they can
earn better money legally? Three friends who were supposed to be coming let her
down at the last minute, and she has brought only Marta and Tomasz to England
with her. The Dumpling has had to find additional labor through other agents of a
more shady character, and has even hinted that he will not renew her contract.
Just let him dare - we will see what the wife has to say.
Excerpted from Strawberry Fields by Marina Lewycka Copyright © 2007 by Marina Lewycka. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Group USA, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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