This was ok - I liked the multicultural London setting and the writing was fine, but there wasn't really a cohesive plot

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

I can’t remember why I requested The Lubetkin Legacy for review, I have a feeling it was to satisfy a challenge. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I did, mostly.

The Lubetkin Legacy is a quirky, rather rambling novel which centres on two characters who live in a social housing block of flats in North London named Mandelay Court.

Berthold Sidebottom has lived in the top floor apartment with his mother, for most of his life. Named after the building’s architect, Berthold Lubetkin, with whom his mother claimed to have an affair, he is In his mid fifties, bald, divorced, and an unemployed actor. When his mother, Lily Lukashenko, dies unexpectedly, Berthold is worried that the council will repossess the flat, and so he invites the elderly Ukrainian widow who shared his mother’s hospital room to live with him and pretend to be his mother, until he can arrange for the transfer of possession.

Violet, Kenyan-born, but mostly raised in England, moves into the apartment next door to Berthold. Barely into her twenties, she is excited to start her first job in a city firm, having recently graduated university, but it quickly begins to lose its shine when she learns of her employers shady financial dealings.

The two characters are only loosely connected, Berthold spends a disturbing amount of time lusting after Violet, who is half his age and barely aware of his existence. In fact the connection is so limited, and Violet’s story so disparate, I don’t think it had a place in this novel at all. Berthold, and his mother substitute, Inna, would have been enough to carry the story.

Though to be honest I struggled with Berthold’s character. He is a bit of a sad sack, fairly useless with the practical, prone to randomly spouting Shakespeare, insulting George Clooney, and often behaves like a sex-starved creep. He is a pitiable figure of a man really, but does occasionally provoke some sympathy. I loved Inna though, her eccentric use of the English language (it’s her fourth, maybe fifth, language) is hilarious.

Despite the farcical presentation of this novel, the main themes of the novel are socio-political, taking aim at the UK’s policy of austerity, privatisation of social housing, the introduction of the bedroom tax, the consequences of the employment scheme, the disintegration of community, and on a larger scale, the misuse of tax havens, greed, exploitation, and corruption.

I liked this, mostly. Despite its many flaws, The Lubetkin Legacy is entertaining and has some important points to make about the failures of social policy.

I knew I would love this, I always love Lewycka’s work and I wasn’t wrong. This book made me ache with sadness and it made me laugh out loud. A gem.

This was a frustrating read - while the characters were interesting I felt the plot really dragged and the humour was perhaps too quirky for me.

The story centres around the 'legacy' of a flat in London, and on an emotional level, the legacy of love and relationships left for a socially awkward, or even inept middle aged man. The writing was quite humorous, or at least, I could see that it was meant to be, but it just left me a bit irritated.

This is typical of Marina's other novels and is funny in parts and sad in parts. I love her portrayals of family life.

I liked Marina Lewycka's writing in Two Caravans but didn't get on with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian so wasn't sure what I would make of this. This, for me, is a combination of the two, in the sense that I enjoyed the gentle humour and the way she manages to touch on issues like corruption or racism as an integral part of the story, but I also wanted to shake Berthold out of his self-centred ways so he might learn to empathise with those around him! I was interested in the background lives of several of the characters (although some were perhaps a bit cliched), and enough in Lubetkin to look up details of his projects and his ethos. An enjoyable and entertaining read.