The Road Home: A Novel

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

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 �migr�'s look at London. (Aug.)
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Author Information

Bio of Rose Tremain

Rose Tremain is the author of eight novels, including "The Way I Found Her" (WSP 1999), which was a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year in 1998, "Sacred Country" (WSP 1999), which won both the James Tait Memorial Prize & the Prix Femina Etranger in France, & "Restoration", which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize & was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1995. Tremain's work has been translated into fourteen languages. She lives in Norfolk, England, with the biographer Richard Holmes, & has a daughter, Eleanor, who is an actress. 010

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Additional Info

Imprint

Little Brown & Company

Filesize

867.57 KB

Number of Pages

320

eBook ISBN

9780316032827

Awards

• Orange Prize for Fiction