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the teasing and pinning of a french twist, the bargain itself had a twist to it, a twist which began with the twisting of the bargain shopper's arm that Sunday in church. As one eye witness described it, the sleeve of the bargain coat began to fall off during High Mass. It turned out that the skins of the Persian lamb were not sewn together, only glued to a mesh. As the owner moved around, the mesh glue gave out and the coat began to lose its skins. There was not much laughter at that one. Every one was full of sympathy for it could, indeed, have been their own bargain coats. Such stories made visits to Lesia's beauty shop more memorable than any hairdo. But what was most interesting was the patrons themselves — their mannerisms, their bearing, their histories. Most of them had been placed by tradition into the :dutiful wife" mold whose husbands had to have soup with every dinner. They also had to work, often at menial jobs, since life was not that easy even in America. Many of them had an upper class background covered with the mantle of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire's code of etiquette and form. They circumvented the effects of culture shock by holding together in a microcosm all their own, where things were done according to the old rules and mores. These ladies were oblivious to trendy style; the rules for quality had been set long ago in their lives. Good taste was a "vis mayor", a power to be obeyed. Within that realm they talked about their husbands and their children, whispered about indiscretions, and even, on occasion, made quiet reference to the forbidden topic of sex. But it was the keeping up of appearances which was the mainstay of the patrons of Lesia's beauty shop, something, I suppose, common to all ethnic groups. One could not judge them for this for sometimes, appearances were all they had. Their lives, tom up by war, had only recently begun to mend. So those who had not had the opportunity to finish school yearned to prove their cultural polish. Those who had suffered eco nomically needed to have others know they were someone of class and breeding. All this in the microcosm of a beauty salon. As I look back on the time spent in that world, I savor the memories as a legacy willingly accepted from my parents' generation. It matched in richness and grandeur the high and teased coiffure of the time. ANNA REID'S BORDERLAND: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE HISTORY OF UKRAINE A review by MARTHA BOHACHEVSKY CHOMIAK Anna Reid, a British journalist who covered Ukraine for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph published Borderland in Great Britain in 1997, two years before the United States edition appeared in print (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1999). Loosely using major cities as her posts, Reid leapfrogs through the history of Ukraine and its present problems to provide a lively and readable overview of the country's complex story. One can quibble with her stressing the influence of Western Ukraine and with the statement that equates alleged UPA brutalities with those committed by the SS and the NKVD. Her reading of today's Ukraine as a country divided between East and West is certainly not universally accepted. But none of this detracts from the readability and usefulness of the book, or from the effective weaving of heavy history and perceptive reportage. The general tone of the book is very favorable to Ukraine as a country, especially in commending the harmony in which its people live. It is critical of the government and bitter about the corruption. Some of the comments are dated: the statement that Russia is doing well economically while Ukraine is not is hardly the case now, but this is a small blemish on an otherwise worthwhile read. The fact that the book was written by a non-Ukrainian is a definite plus. And the icing on the cake of this review — the book's breezy readability will make your teenager more willing to learn about her/his ancestral land. “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИЙ 2000 21
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