Ludmila's Broken English is DBC Pierre's second novel. He won the Booker Prize as a dark horse in 2003 for his first novel, Vernon God Little.

This is the story of two improbable storylines, which of course eventually intersect.

Ludmila is a young woman in Ublisk, living with her family in virtual poverty, depending solely on the grandfather's pension to survive. When her grandfather tries to rape her in a field one day, Ludmila takes matters into her own hands – literally – and strangles him with her glove. Although her family is suspicious, they quickly mobilize to figure out how to guarantee the family's survival. In the end, they decide to sell the family's tractor and live off of the proceeds, while sending Ludmila to the nearest city to seek employment.

Bunny and Blair Heath are thirty-three-year-old men who, until recently, have been conjoined and living in a government home. The powers-that-be decide to separate them and ship them off to London to see if they can lead independent lives – get jobs, take care of themselves, meet people. Blair embraces the change, finds a job, and immediately starts trying to find intimacy with women. Bunny is more tentative, and begs Blair to remain close to him.

These two tales are improbably connected through Ludmila's appearance on a Russian bride web site.

Pierre can conjure up some interesting, one-of-a-kind descriptions, like this one of London:

“…a lurid juggernaut in its gran's old slippers. Somewhere in London 's gizzard stood a lever that drove it, but with no setting for fast or slow, no notch forward or back. Its welded lever read: Gone. Mind the fucking gap.”

The sum of all the interesting sentences, however, makes the writing sluggish and bloated, lacking the scintillating energy of a Rushdie sentence, or the promise hinted at with Vernon God Little. It does not appear that Pierre has anything insightful to say, but more that he wants to prove a futile point that he can say precisely whatever he wishes.

Unreadable. Such a disappointment after VGL. Silly characters saying ludicrous things. ( )

I thought this was disspointing compared to Vernon God Little. The story takes so long to unfold, and most of the action is in the last quarter of the book where the story, by contrast, feels too rushed. The dialogue can also be a little hard to follow at times. ( )

I've reserved 5* for what I deem to be a classic. That said, this was as close to that as is possible without being annointed as such. In short, it was an excellent book.I read Vernon God Little two or three years ago when it first came out. The book was quite good so I was excited when I heard about Pierre's upcoming release. I tracked this one down the day it came out.The book tracks parallel stories. The first story follows a very poor Eastern European family and, in particular, the young girl of that family, Ludmila . The other story line follows two recently separated siamese twin brothers who are assimilating into their new world of independence. One brother, Buns, is the brains and the other brother, Blair, is the brawn. Now detached, Blair wants to live a life of wealth, women, and fun. Buns wants security and is afraid of their new found freedom.

**SPOILER ALERT (Highlight)**

In his search for happiness, Blair finds a job with a company that manufactures some sort of happy potion. Essentially, the way it's described in the story, it sounds like Pop Rocks that are stirred into a drink. Once consumed, the person is euphoric for several hours. (Honestly, this euphoric drink is the only thing that bothered me about the story but it's critical to the plot so I came to accept it.) On top of this potion, the owner of the company that now employs Blair also has connections with a mail-order brides organization.Meanwhile, the death of Ludmila's grandfather and the subsequent loss of his pension forces Ludmila to strike out in search of a new source of income for the family. But all she really wants is to get out of her war torn country with her soldier boyfriend. As she struggles to find work and grows weary of waiting for her lover, her desperation grows. In the process, she stumbles across a family who has connections to setting up mail-order brides with Western men.As you can now surmise, the paths of Ludmila and the brothers intersect as Blair looks for a mail-order bride on the web. He sees Ludmila's photo and must go to see her even if it means tricking Buns into the journey.They find her and neither side of the equation will ever be the same. They're captured by soldiers and the happy potion comes back to haunt Blair when it makes the soldiers more aggressive.All that said, I loved the multiple meanings of the title. Ludmila did have some minimal skills in speaking English (so her English was "broken"). In addition, the Englishmen who came to find her were recently separated siamese twins (hence "broken" apart), in addition, having been in assisted living all of their lives, they functioned as if they were "broken" now that they were on their own and spending their first time in a foreign country. It was like two children free in a strange land. Again, there are probably more ways to interpret the title but it was a neat thing to consider its many meanings.The book was original, superbly written, and engrossing from cover to cover. It's even the rare book that has a well-executed conclusion.

*****END OF SPOILERS*****

DBC Pierre will be a long-term favorite of mine and he has secured his future as an author worthy of everyone's attention. Ultimately, I believe this book is more deserving of the Booker Prize than Vernon God Little was and that says quite a lot. ( )