What do You think about The Road Home (2007)?
Here's the thing about fiction: I could read for hours about the plight of immigrants and still not know what it felt like to BE an immigrant. But within a few pages of this beautiful, heartbreaking novel I could empathize with Lev and begin to imagine what it would feel like to start over in a foreign place (for Lev, London is his new home). I have lived all my life in two states in Western US. I love to travel, but I always know home is waiting there for me. What a hardship it would be to leave your country and try to make a better life in a strange land and often deal with hostile people. I know I used the word "heartbreaking", but don't be put off by that. There are moments of comedy and joy as well. It's not a downer. At one point he is given a copy of Hamlet and it was delightful to watch how he came to understand Shakespeare. There is also a cell phone scene that I shall never forget. Eek!This is a timely book and it deals with an issue that I am passionate about. Highly recommended. Another THANK YOU to Simon Savidge for the recommendation!
—Jana
The plot of the book is pretty straightforward. Lev, a 42 year old widowed man, has recently emigrated from an unnamed Eastern European country to find work and money in London. He meets a series of people who help him along the way; encounters a number of obstacles . . . There are (as many people have pointed out) various inaccuracies in the book and a couple of glaring bad characterizations. These did not however distract from the overall enjoyment of the book.Rose Tremain said that she talked to Polish immigrants to get a feel for how moving to England was for them. In that sense, I do think I gained more insight and a little more sensitivity.There was some snatches of humour - a bit of a dig at the pretentious English art theater set which I enjoyed sharing with my husband (we have a differing opinion).Lev was not a particularly likeable character. I think what I liked was some of the odd characters who appeared in the book and the feeling that there are some nice people around who are still willing to do some random acts of kindness (restored some faith in mankind).All in all, an enjoyable and memorable read.
—Maureen Farrimond
I ordered The Road Home with the usual expectations that one would have for a book by an admired author. But, oh dear. It is unbelievable at so many levels, as well as schematic and sentimental. There are irritating little mistakes of fact that Rose Tremain shouldn't make: London underground trains running on Christmas Day; a man's mobile is stolen, he gets another and is instantly rung on it, even though of course the sim card will have remained in the stolen phone so no one would know his new number...and so on. But then, take her main character, Lev, who comes from an unnamed Baltic country which has just become an EU accession state: he was latterly a manual worker in a wood mill, until it closed because there were no trees left to process, yet his speech patterns (in his native tongue) veer from the almost stupid to the incredibly wordy; his inner life doesn't seem to belong to a man of his life experience and background. He falls for a young, plump kitchen worker in an upmarket restaurant where he does the washing up. She speaks of 'emporia'! Really? I doubt she'd know the word, and if she did, she'd say 'emporiums'. There is something astonishingly cloth-eared in the dialogue, as if all the accents and dialect Tremain gives her characters came out of a handbook.But it's plot more than anything that enrages. One can see every twist and turn coming, down to the gift to Lev of money from a wealthy old woman in a nursing home for whom he has cooked good meals; down to the uncanny physical similarity between a young waitress he meets on his return home to his beloved but deceased wife; down to his keen-eyed observation of the cooking that goes on in the kitchen where he washed up to his own future proficiency as a chef. I closed the book in something approaching fury.
—Zina
