The Ukrainian Wedding

Myroslav Shkandrij is head of the Department of German and Slavic
Studies at the University of Manitoba and editor of The Cultural
Renaissance in Ukraine: Polemical Pamphlets, 1925–1926.

Larry Warwaruk’s second novel is set in a Ukrainian settlement in the
Dauphin area of Manitoba during World War II. A wedding, a femme fatale,
and a murder investigation provide the action. But the story’s
interest lies in the characters, who are conflicted over their attitudes
toward English Canada on the one hand, and toward the land and culture
of their origins on the other. Warwaruk blends Ukrainian myths, legends,
and literary references with realistic observation and a knowledge of
rural life. The layering produces a novel of nuances that aims not only
to capture the flavor of a particular period and place, but also to say
something important about the fragmented experience of second- and
third-generation Ukrainians.

This ambitious book has much to recommend it: an ear for dialogue, an
awareness of cultural hybridity, and an often unsentimental attitude to
human relations. Warwaruk creates a mysterious aura by using folk
beliefs and historical references to explain patterns of behavior. The
resulting book mixes the realist traditions of the pioneer novel with
the ethnographic observation and magical overlay of Mykhailo
Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Indeed, that classic
figures strongly in this novel as a key to plot and characterization.
Like Kotsiubynsky, Warwaruk succeeds in giving his characters a
mysterious and richly symbolic presence.