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The Road Home | 
 enlarge | Author: Rose Tremain
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £2.72
You Save: £5.27 (66%)
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Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 10
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.9 x 1
ISBN: 0099478463
EAN: 9780099478461
ASIN: 0099478463
Publication Date: June 12, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: IN STOCK - BRAND NEW - IMMEDIATE DISPATCH
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Superbly written, perceptive novel August 26, 2008
L. H. Healy (Hertfordshire, UK)
Having been recommended to me on good authority and having heard of the reputation of (but never read) Rose Tremain, I had high expectations of this novel. Well it didn't disappoint me, in fact it exceeded those expectations.
Other reviewers have gone into detail here on the plot, suffice to say that Lev journeys to the UK from Eastern Europe to look for work and earn money to send home and improve the lives of his daughter and mother, his wife having died tragically young. He overcomes difficulties, and is lucky enough to encounter some genuinely kind, thoughtful and friendly people who help make it possible for him to see his plans through, though not without emotional and financial setbacks along the way. How interesting for us as readers to be able to experience this look at how life may be for an immigrant to the UK, one who wants to work hard here.
On his journey, and during his stay in the UK, Tremain observes with clever insight the pitfalls, sheer hard-work, sadness, pain, and genuine friendships that can all arise when entering a foreign land and trying to make a (temporary) life there. And yes, though the ending is fairly upbeat and perhaps a little more romanicised than the rest of the novel, I was so glad that it ended this way, to see the result of all the work.
Beautifully written, very perceptive, and most of all the characters were so well drawn and interesting, and I felt that I was journeying along with Lev, willing him on to succeed and keep working hard for his dream.
 A THING OF BEAUTY August 21, 2008
Alice Vieira (LISBON, Portugal)
"THE ROAD HOME", by Rose Tremain
I read this novel in two days.I simply couldn't leave it. I underlined sentences,words...Rose Tremain gives us the unforgettable portrait of Lev, an immigrant from somewhere in east Europe who arrives in London thinking that most English people look something like Alec Guinness in "Bridge on the River Kwai"...It is a portrait completely different from the stereotypes of immigrants we find in most books dealing with this subject. It is utterly moving, funny, extremely well written --a joy for all readers (I hope...)
The road to salvation (7/10) August 19, 2008
jamesewan (London / Grenoble)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Rose Tremain's Orange Prize-winning `The Road Home` is a compassionate if somewhat conventional novel about a migrant worker from Eastern Europe who seeks a job in England to provide money for his family. Opening with a quote from The Grapes of Wrath, `The Road Home' is a contemporary take on the Steinbeck paradigm, depicting a new reality affecting thousands of people from poorer parts of Europe. As for many for whom an expanded EU offers hope to make a better life, Tremain's protagonist Lev heads for London. A 43 year old widower, Lev is forced to take his chances in the UK when work dries up in his town. A combination of the kindness of stangers and hard work give him the opportunity to save his family, who face destitution due to plans to build a dam that would flood his village.
It took me a while to warm to the protagonist, since he seemed more of a notional, idealised emigrant than a real person. Earnest, widowed, moral, and conveniently attractive, he seemed a bit too romanticised for my liking. But as the story develops, and we are afforded a little access to his memory, a more complex and tangible portait emerges: Lev's jealousy of a local beaurocrat, with whom he suspects his wife had an affair, has an aura of violence about it; and he has a couple of rages in the novel ("... that old anger of mine") that cross the line.
`Heart-warming' is not an adjective I'd normally use to describe the novels I like, but the sense of progress and optimism in `The Road Home' is infectious and moving without being excessivly sentimental. Tremain constructs her narrative with a deft economy indicative of her tenure teaching creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Sometmes, it feels a little too careful, the peaks and troughs of Lev's fortune mapped out a little too neatly. Also I found the novel's insistence of the humanity of the poor, and the general superficiality of the privileged, lacked subtlety. The London art circles Lev is forced to confront (during his romance with a social-climbing English colleague) are easy targets: predictably shallow and pretentious. That Lev can't relate to their wry remarks, or the crude metaphors apparent at the theatre and in the artworks he is shown, plays to the romanticised notion of the emigrant as earthy and authentic, untainted by cosmopolitan cynicism and wastefulness.
`The Road Home' engaged me most in the kitchen at GK Ashe, a restaurant that offers Lev his first proper job - washing dishes - but also a sense of direction and ultimately salvation. His initiation into the the catering hierachy is as compellingly told as his ignominous exit from it is palpably catastrophic. At first nicknamed `Nurse' to reflect his duty to keep things stringently clean, he describes "... the hot water, the grandeur of the steel surfaces, the fierceness of of the rinse-faucet ... the chefs hurled down mixing bowls, strainers, knives, stock pans, whisks and chopping boards". Compared to two other novels with depictions of kitchen life - Orwell's `Down and Out in Paris and London', springs to mind, as does one narrative thread in Kiran Desai's `The Inheritance of Loss` - the cleanliness and precision is almost surgical. Whereas in Desai's novel the kitchen is a hopeless dead-end for the immigrant underclass in New York, in `The Road Home' it briefly provides Lev a surrogate family with a brusque, patriachal boss. The meritocratic fair-play of the kitchen makes much more sense to Lev than the allegorical theatre and artworks his English girlfrien urges him to embrace.
A compelling narrative, then, but `The Road Home' lacks for me a tangible outsider's view of London. As a Londoner but now relocated to France, my home city becomes stranger and stranger each time I visist: increasingly transient, chaotic. I wanted to immerse myself in London as seen through the eyes of a stranger. Surely such a capital city would make a more profound impression (either positive or negative) on someone who had spent their entire life in rural Eastern Europe. Here Tremain's descriptive talents don't seem quite up to the task of conveying the awe and alienation you would expect. Contemporary Britain could be a fascinating literary canvas, but many authors seem to shirk from the task of capturing it's essence in the same way that American writers have long endeavoured to with their own nation. Blake Morrison did a fairly good job on `South of the River`, but I yearn to see something on the scale of Updike's Rabbit series, for example, written about the UK.
My first Rose Tremain - what a find! August 16, 2008
Lynne Barrett-lee (Cardiff, Wales)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Though the name has always been familiar to me, the author's work hasn't - I guess I've just never 'bumped into' one before. And how excited I now am to know I have her whole back catalogue to immerse myself in.
Lev,the Eastwern Eurpoean immigrant whose story this is, is an instantly engaging hero, and if you weren't captivated and rooting for him from the very first page then you must have a hard heart indeed. What a fine writer Tremain is; every little word, every observation, every line of dialogue, just perfect. So much insight into the human experience, and such an assured way of storytelling. Flawless. Now then. Which Tremain to read next? Suggestions from Tremain fans would be most welcome via my profile page!!!
Hugely Enjoyable August 13, 2008
A. C. Saunders (UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Engrossing, fascinating, well written and absorbing. Believable, catchy characters coupled with a very realistic and believable plot.
I thoroghly enjoyed this book. Buy it now and read it.
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