Reviews: 'Voroshilovgrad,' by Serhiy Zhadan, and 'The Mechanical Horse,' by Margaret Guroff

By Serhiy Zhadan. (Deep Vellum, 403 pages, $15.95.)

There are books that grab a reader's interest in the first couple of pages. This isn't one of them. But if you have a little patience and can accept that a young man named Herman is the central character of a book set in the Ukraine, "Voroshilovgrad" turns into an entertaining tale. Albeit with a slow where's-this-going? opening.

When his brother suddenly disappears, Herman returns to his hometown for a day to check on his brother's gas station. Only he winds up staying. Local hoods working for a "corn guy" insist that he sell them his property. Herman, a bit of a smart aleck, takes umbrage. He bonds with Kocha, an aging former soldier who likes his booze and lives in a trailer by the gas station where he does odd jobs, and Injured, a former soccer star turned mechanic.

Meanwhile, Herman, a self-described "independent expert," faces one challenge after another. With his old buddies, he plays in a soccer match against the hated natural gas workers, which seems headed for a brawl. He attends a gypsy funeral, where he gets "close" to both daughters of the deceased. A band of nomads rescues him while he's trying to hide from the bad guys.

Too much info? Nee (as they say in Ukraine), there's much more. Trouble keeps finding Herman, and it's hard not to root for him.

ROMAN AUGUSTOVIZ, sports copy editor

By Margaret Guroff. (University of Texas Press, 166 pages, $24.95.)

Yet Margaret Guroff also provides a history of ebb and flow. Introduced on this continent in 1819 in Baltimore, the draisine was a cumbersome push-along contraption, even after pedals were added in 1865. It didn't become a popular phenomenon until inflatable tires of equal size and the lowered cost from mass production made cycling a matter of recreation and commuting, especially when real income spiked late in the century. Cyclists pushed for better roads long before there were enough drivers to form a lobby. One local sign of growing popularity was St. Paul's development of 115 miles of graveled cycling paths by 1902, paths later absorbed by widening roadways for autos and a network that the city is only beginning to replicate.

The boom fizzled by the late 1890s as fickle tastes changed in a newly consumerist society. Some bike manufacturers tinkered with making autos; bike mechanics such as the Wright brothers applied cycling technology to solving problems of flight. For much of the 20th century, bike makers chased the youth market. By 1933, there were 17 cars for every bike in America; Europe boasted seven bikes for every car.

Other nations also found ways to make the bike useful, for better or worse. A blitzkrieg on bikes led the Japanese capture of Malaysia shortly after Pearl Harbor. The adaptation of bikes to carry up to 400 pounds on jungle trails supplied the guerrillas who drove the French and then the Americans out of Vietnam.

It was servicemen returning from World War II, enamored of more sprightly English cycles, who snapped them up when the U.S. slashed tariffs on them to help the British economy. The more responsive bikes were mimicked by U.S. manufacturers, and the 1960s fitness boom helped get more people on cycles just at the dawn of the environmental age. Bikes outsold cars for three years in a row, and then the mountain biking boom accelerated sales even more. Guroff brings us today's urban boom in cycles, some for commuting and some for recreation.

STEVE BRANDT, staff writer