The Road Home (2007)

Surprisingly good story of a Russian immigrant to London. ( )

This is the first of Rose Tremain's books that I've read, and all I can say is I wish I'd discovered her before now!

The Road Home is beautifully written, with elegant prose, and a marvelous sense of time and place. I thought that all of the characters were believable and their motivations understandable. The central character, Lev, challenges the reader to set aside easy stereotypical notions of eastern European immigrants. The sense of place and time was spot-on and I was hooked on the book from page 1.

A page-turner with heart and sole, that I am so glad I read. Well deserving of its 5 stars.
© Koplowitz 2010 ( )

As I explained in my blog post on this book (if you're interested, it's at http://www.authormelaniegarrett.com/myblog/) pressures of work meant I had to 'cheat' somewhat on my book group and go with the audio version of this book.

Having said this, I suspect that it was Juliet Stevenson's reading of this title which made me enjoy it so much. I somehow doubt whether I would have kept going without the richness of her voice and the way imbued the characters with so much life.

It's not that I really had a problem with the characters themselves, but rather I found the whole thing rather lacking in momentum. It felt more like a four hundred page anecdote than a novel somehow - although there were many exquisite moments. Overall, I just felt everything came so easily for everyone and worked out so perfectly that it seemed an implausibly rose-tinted account of a migrant worker's experience.

Which is a shame, because 'The Way I Found Her' is one of my favourite novels. ( )

A very enjoyable read which reminded me a lot of American Boy by Andrew Taylor due,not to the era as this was a modern day tale but, to the style of narrative which was interesting but not unsettling. I found Lev's two aggressive outbursts towards Sophie quite out of character and difficult to empathise with but all of the characters were extremely well written. ( )

When the sawmill closes ("they ran out of trees"), Lev leaves his (unnamed) Eastern European country and travels to London to find work so that he can support his mother and young daughter, but making money does little for the soul and Lev needs to struggle if he is to be able to return home properly, other than as a shadow of his true self. What is most interesting to me is that Lev's existence in London, which at first deals only with the issues of being an outsider, an immigrant, quickly becomes that of relationships. The point seem to be that to be human means that, no matter who or what or where you are, everything is second to how you relate to other people. And Lev is about average when it comes to relationships - some go well, some less well, a few are close to disastrous. It is a different twist to the immigrant story, since Lev is not looking to make his life in London - he's wanting to go back as soon as possible, so instead of trying to fit in, he acts as his old self as much as possible. Inevitably, society and social customs will influence him and he will either bend to it or break completely - at the story's core, then, is the issue of loneliness and how far one would stretch to alleviate it. The ending comes dangerously close to being precious compared to the sometimes cruel storyline, but there is a tint of bitter too, so it isn't too bad. ( )