Description
From Publishers Weekly Tremain ( Restoration ) turns in a low-key but emotionally potent look at the melancholia of migration for her 14th book. Olev, a 42-year-old widower from an unnamed former east bloc republic, is taking a bus to London, where he imagines every man resembles Alec Guinness and hard work will be rewarded by wealth. He has left behind a sad young daughter, a stubborn mother and the newly shuttered sawmill where he had worked for years. His landing is harsh: the British are unpleasant, immigrants are unwelcome, and he's often overwhelmed by homesickness. But Lev personifies Tremain's remarkable ability to craft characters whose essential goodness shines through tough, drab circumstances. Among them are Lydia, the fellow expatriate; Christy, Lev's alcoholic Irish landlord who misses his own daughter; and even the cruelly demanding Gregory, chef-proprietor of the posh restaurant where Lev first finds work. A contrived but still satisfying ending marks this adroit émigré's look at London. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The New Yorker Tremain�s protagonists are often faced with trials that have a fabled quality�a doomed romance in the seventeenth-century Danish court; a sex change in nineteen-fifties Suffolk�and her latest novel is no exception. Lev has left his mother and child in his village in Eastern Europe to seek work in London, bringing with him an E.U. passport, a handful of English phrases, and a small stash of cash and vodka. At first, he is repelled by what he finds: the shaved heads, the greasy food in disposable packaging, the women thrusting their breasts at him from the pages of the daily paper. But opportunities also push themselves forward in this cold new world; soon he is scheming for a way to unite his future and his past. At once timeless and bitingly contemporary, this novel explores the life now lived by millions�when one�s hope lies in one country and one�s heart in another.Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker END From Booklist After the death of his wife, Lev leaves his unnamed Eastern European country for London to try and make enough money to support his mother and daughter. His only contact with home becomes a series of cell-phone calls with his hilarious and irrepressible best friend and with his depressed mother. Through his journey, Lev becomes a sort of anti-Candide, starting off depressed and pessimistic and then experiencingxa0a series of happy accidents and good relationships that give him hope and allow him to rebuild his life and sense of self. Lev manages to be both a symbol of migrant workers and a fully developed character in his own right. Not all of the characters in the book are so lucky, especially Sophie, a young coworker–love interest, who morphs from charitable ingénue to fame-obsessed femme fatale with little explanation. Overall, this is an engaging, enjoyable, and informative read. --Marta Segal Block "...[Tremain} proves herself again magically capable of animating a character from the inside out, illuminating the heart of one modern exile with an extraordinary degree of love, imagination and insight. The pleasure, the wit and the joy in humanity that Tremain brings to every page do what literature, at its best, should do: connect us, as E.M. Forster famously exhorted. Particularly, connect us to the invisible, the lonely, the barely seen." ( Los Angeles Times Stacey D'Erasmo )"Memorable. . .The journey through alienation toward self-respect and prosperity runs on a well-traveled road, but Tremain's vivid prose and attention to detail make this incarnation both convincing and pleasurable." ( The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Susan Grimm )"At once a mystery story, a psychological exploration and a novel of ideas. That it should succeed and provoke on these various levels pays high tribute to Tremain's intellect." ( New York Times Book Review Claire Messud (on "The Way I Found Her") )"Wise, timely and emotionally satisfying, Rose Tremain's characters are immediately recognisable as is her London seen through the eyes of her Eastern European migrant." ( Judges' citation, the 2008 Costa Book Awards )"This is a powerfully imagined story and a wonderful feat of emotional empathy, told with great warmth and humor." ( Judges' citation, the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008-01-00)"Like Amy Bloom's recent novel, Away , or Ha Jin's A Free Life , Whitbread Award winner Tremain has written a worthy addition to the growing body of work centered on the loneliness and frustration of the immigrant experience." ( Library Journal )"A sort of anti-Candide...Lev manages to be both a symbol of migrant workers and a fully developed character in his own right...an engaging, enjoyable, and informative read." ( Booklist )"Tremain simultaneously constructs a subtly detailed mosaic of personal and cultural distinctions and conflicts.... Rudi is an ingenious comic counterpart to Candide's annoyingly optimistic mentor Pangloss, and the novel dances into vigorous life whenever he takes hold of it. Still, Lev offers readers ample reason to get lost in this immensely likable novel's many pleasures. One of the best from the versatile Tremain, who keeps on challenging herself, and rewarding readers." ( Kirkus )"Rose Tremain so fully inhabits her characters, she's a virtual stowaway in their lives...Tremain's 10th novel is a moving, utterly absorbing portrait of deracination, hope, loss, longing and fortitude...Her writing is so good, she makes us hear English anew, from the viewpoint of someone not fully fluent." ( San Francisco Chronicle Heller McAlpin )"If life truly is all about the journey, then we're fortunate to have Rose Tremain as our guide...The Road Home is the work of a generous author, a guide who reveals the strangeness in the place we once imagined was home." ( Miami Herald Ellen Kanner )"Timely and moving." ( TimeOut Sophie Fels )"Tremain transforms this episodic road story into a gem of a novel, driven by a memorable character whose caring and ambition move him from a difficult personal situation and damaging historical past toward a positive new life." ( Seattle Times Robert Allen Papinchak )"An immigrant's tale and an outsider's journey of self-discovery. The concept is nothing new, but Tremain's prose saves Lev from cliché and produces an unexpected, poignant story... this British novel can remind any American reader of the loneliness and hope of the immigrant experience." ( Chicago Sun-Times Allecia Vermillion )"It's not difficult to see why author Rose Tremain won the Orange Prize--a prestigious British fiction award--for her latest novel, The Road Home . From page one, Tremain plunges readers deep into the journey of Lev, an immigrant from an unnamed Eastern European country...An unexpected, poignant story." ( Chicago Sun Times Allecia Vermillion )"Tremain's protagonists are often faced with trials that have a fabled quality...and her latest novel is no exception...At once timeless and bitingly contemporary, this novel explores the life now lived by millions--when one's hope lies in one country and one's heart in another." ( New Yorker )"A gem of a novel, driven by a memorable character whose caring and ambition move him from a difficult personal situation and damaging historical past toward a positive new life." ( Seattle Times Robert Allen Papinchak ) Rose Tremain lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer Richard Holmes. Read more
Features & Highlights
- In the wake of factory closings and his beloved wife's death, Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to London, seeking work to support his mother and his little daughter. After a spell of homelessness, he finds a job in the kitchen of a posh restaurant, and a room in the house of an appealing Irishman who has also lost his family. Never mind that Lev must sleep in a bunk bed surrounded by plastic toys--he has found a friend and shelter. However constricted his life in England remains he compensates by daydreaming of home, by having an affair with a younger restaurant worker (and dodging the attentions of other women), and by trading gossip and ambitions via cell phone with his hilarious old friend Rudi who, dreaming of the wealthy West, lives largely for his battered Chevrolet. Homesickness dogs Lev, not only for nostalgic reasons, but because he doesn't belong, body or soul, to his new country-but can he really go home again? Rose Tremain's prodigious talents as a prose writer are on full display in THE ROAD HOME, but her novel never loses sight of what is truly important in the lives we lead.
