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The Road Home

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 2,966 ratings · 425 reviews

In the story of Lev, newly arrived in London from Eastern Europe, Rose Tremain has written a wise and witty book about the contemporary migrant experience.
On the coach, Lev chose a seat near the back and he sat huddled against the window, staring out at the land he was leaving. . . . Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to Eastern Euro...more

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published August 28th 2007 by Chatto and Windus (first published 2007)

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Jan 31, 2013 Lance Greenfield Mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fiction so convincing that it could be a true story.

The journey begins with Lev's bus journey from his home in Poland to the loneliness of impersonal London. Lev is into his early forties, has recently lost his wife to cancer and believes that the only way that he can support his very young daughter and his mother is to find himself a job in London. His life-long friend, who supposedly knows such things, has told Lev that he should be able to get by in London on £20 a week. The truth becomes app...more

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Mar 12, 2010 Jon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Am writing this in post read glow. I love Tremain, i definately need to read more. Music and Silence was such a treasure of a book for me, and this one so totally different it threw me for a bit. The setting of a gritty and real London, people struggling to get by, cold bitter and grim was a little close to home. But once that feeling passed I had to acknowledge that It was good to be reading about real life, current issues and struggles. I think Tremains real gift in this was her characterisati...more

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Dec 19, 2008 Ian Mapp rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. My book of the year 2008. You cannot argue with literature that makes you laugh, cry and change the way that you think of the world. And this book does all three.

Lev is an eastern european immigrant to the UK, believing that he can live on £20 a week. He meets Lydia on the way and this is the start of the first lesson - the kindness of strangers and the working classes (real working classes, not dolescum) is the first lesson.

Lev has a dark history - he has lost his job, his wife died tragically...more My book of the year 2008. You cannot argue with literature that makes you laugh, cry and change the way that you think of the world. And this book does all three.

Lev is an eastern european immigrant to the UK, believing that he can live on £20 a week. He meets Lydia on the way and this is the start of the first lesson - the kindness of strangers and the working classes (real working classes, not dolescum) is the first lesson.

Lev has a dark history - he has lost his job, his wife died tragically of leukemia and he has had to leave his young daughter and friends to try and earn a living in the UK.

He starts at the bottom - delivering leaflets for kebab shops and living rough until he finds a place to live with an Irish immigrant. Although some of this characters are a little bit stereotypical - the second lesson is how friendships with people from different backgrounds can be formed.

He then gets a job in a restaurant (is this the restaurant of Gordon Ramsey?) and works his way up from washer to salad prep chef. He also starts a relationship with Sophie.

In the strangest part of the book - she hooks up with vacuous celebrity artists and the relationship goes sour - getting to the point where he both attacks her in public and eventually rapes her. This is against everything else that we know of Levs character - who has been nothing but gallant with morals all the way through. What was Tremain trying to say here? The working classes are all prone to violence? Even good men complete evil actions. Not sure.

This forces him to leave his dream job - and start as a vegetable picker in the country. Another chance for friendships to build in unexpected places and again, like in the Colour, he has a homosexual experience which is quite beautifully written.

In a fairy tale experience, Lev dreams of opening his own restaurant in his home town - which is no under threat from a dam being built. Eventually, the actions of his good deads (helping out at an old peoples home) get him in a position where he can earn enough money to return and live his dream.

You are not sure where the author is going to go here - will it be a sad or happy ending here. Could have gone either way, but I am glad it went the way it did.

The main lesson to be learnt from this book is that I know look at people who are serving me at hotels etc. in a completely different light. They all probably have stories of some similarity to Lev.

In terms of writing - the characterisation is second to none and the pathos is interrupted with some truely hilarious set pieces that dont seem too convulted. The mobile ringing in a concert performance was one such moment.

Wonderful book with plenty to think about and plenty to say about working classes, immigration, celebrity culture and real people.(less)

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Dec 18, 2008 Linda rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

It's a bit crazy to call this a travel book but it certainly transported me. Lev, a Polish migrant goes to England from his small village in Poland in order to find work. He is a widower and needs to support his mother and young daughter. The story shows us the first world from the eyes of the dispossessed and underclass. In Lev's case, he finds a career and a way home. On the way, you meet mostly valiant people who are trying their best to find a life for themselves. For side benefits the story...more

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Oct 28, 2008 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fantastic book. I've only read one other by her, ages ago, which I also liked (and of course given Alzheimer's can't remember title or much about it except it was about royalty in Denmark, possibly? A royal commissioning a musician? Ah yes! Music & Silence! That was it!) Anyway, that was a historical novel and very good, but this is totally bang up to date, and seems an entirely different style, and really quite captivating. A real story for our times. The dreamy East European hero Lev is un...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was a bit tentative about reading this book; it did not initially appeal to me. However, I'm really glad I read the book. The characters really stayed with me. I think it is in many ways a story about the transitions people go through in their lives (or about people adapting when they really have no other choice).

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Nov 02, 2008 Nigel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A beautifully written and satisfying tale of the travails of an East European economic migrant in London. After learning the ropes, he seems to fall on his feet with a catering job, a friendly landlord and a girl, but he doesn't feel he fits in and becomes increasingly distant from his family back home and so comes to realise he needs a plan to sort his life out. The sense of isloation is effectively conveyed as is the shallowness of some London society. It's a novel of great humanity and seniti...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Ron added it · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this, my first Tremain novel. Not a difficult or challenging book, but one to savour, enjoy and remember. The story of Lev who came from Poland to London to make money for his family could, I guess, be the tale of many east Europeans in the last five years, but, as this personalises his life and his character, we can identify with him all the more.

What I loved about the book was mostly the array of people we come across: the crazy friend back home with his "Tchevi", Lydia whose...more

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Jan 09, 2009 Leah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-fiction, politics

While traveling to London over the holidays, I yet again was sparked with curiosity about the political, social, and economical effects of the EU. An already hugely diverse city, London almost now seems to be like the multicultural melting pot New York must have been back at the turn of the 20th century; still frozen in fragments and only in the beginning stages of meltyness.

This is the premise for Tremain's novel The Road Home, about protagonist Lev: an migrant worker who is forced to leave his...more

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Dec 09, 2008 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm a fan of Rose Tremain's work, some of it more than others, of course. She writes about people on the margin, people exiled or disconnected from their true natures by life events or social convention. In this way, 'The Road Home,' a story of an Eastern European immigrant struggling to find work and a life in London, is of a piece with other Tremain novels. And yet, it's not. Lev, our hero, is a much more conventional person than other Tremain protagonists. He's more fully drawn, too, less sty...more

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May 21, 2013 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was given this book on World book night; I think this is the first book I have read by this author. The story revolves around Lev, who leaves his village in Eastern Europe to travel to England. His wife has died recently, and he has lost his job in the lumber mill as all the trees have now gone. He leaves his young daughter with his mother and decides to head to London to find work. His friend Rudy has told him £20.00 would be enough to get by on for a week, first mistake he finds its not! He...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Joey Diamond rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 19, 2013 Dolors rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

An actual novel which stands out for its realism and easy approach.
This is the story of Lev, a middle aged man from Eastern Europe who has to flee from his own country in search for work, leaving his little daughter and his mother back in his beloved village, Baryn.
London is the city where he travels to, weary and ignorant of his fate, harassed by mourning memories of her deceased wife, he has to struggle to find a decent life and a new sense of belonging in this strange city.

I think I really lo...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Hilary G rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ex Bookworm group review:
The Road Home was terribly sentimental, and the outcome was very predictable. The main purpose of some of the characters, such as Lydia and Eva, seemed to be to add a little complexity to what was really a very simple story. The events of the story unfolded in a London so diverse and interesting, I am not sure it really exists. The book may have been flawed in many ways, but I loved it! This book made me feel good about having read it, a pleasure which happens all too ra...more Ex Bookworm group review:
The Road Home was terribly sentimental, and the outcome was very predictable. The main purpose of some of the characters, such as Lydia and Eva, seemed to be to add a little complexity to what was really a very simple story. The events of the story unfolded in a London so diverse and interesting, I am not sure it really exists. The book may have been flawed in many ways, but I loved it! This book made me feel good about having read it, a pleasure which happens all too rarely these days. Aren’t we supposed to enjoy reading? Many books are interesting, clever, funny, whatever, but how many just make you feel good? Not many.

I thought Rose Tremain’s writing was very sensitive as she deftly unravelled some of the myths about immigrants. While there may be some who come here to exploit our welfare state, there must be many more who came here because other choices were so few for them. They come here, prepared to work in jobs British people would not stoop to, and they miss their loved ones. Every immigrant has a story. This immigrant had a mother and a daughter and a wonderful friend called Rudi. Lev’s nostalgia for home brought a lump to my throat on many occasions, and made me laugh on other occasions. Far from exploiting us, Lev was himself exploited. Imagine being so desperate that you will put up with everything rather than lose your job. I cringed at the fact that people couldn’t even be bothered to get Lev’s name right. Imagine being so desperate to be accepted that you don’t even insist on people learning your name.

Rose Tremain never told us (did she?) which Eastern European country the book was about. I don’t think it mattered, wherever it was, it was home to Lev, and how he yearned for it. Imagine being so desperate you had to leave your daughter, your mother, the place where your wife died, your friends, your childhood. I liked Lev such a lot, and though it was rather obvious from quite early on that things would turn out well for him, I welcomed it. He deserved to succeed. Not a great book perhaps, though I notice it did win the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008, but definitely one of the books I have most enjoyed reading this year.
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Sep 30, 2012 Adair rated it 4 of 5 stars

The British writer, Rose Tremain, won the 2008 Orange Prize for her novel, The Road Home, the story of an eastern European immigrant who comes to London to remake his life. In presenting the award, the judges called Tremain “always the bridesmaid, never the bride”. With £30,000 ($61,000) in prize money, she’s blushingly jubilant at last.

The Road Home tells the story of Lev. Unemployed and grieving for his dead wife, he leaves Eastern Europe for London, where he seeks work to support his ailing m...more The British writer, Rose Tremain, won the 2008 Orange Prize for her novel, The Road Home, the story of an eastern European immigrant who comes to London to remake his life. In presenting the award, the judges called Tremain “always the bridesmaid, never the bride”. With £30,000 ($61,000) in prize money, she’s blushingly jubilant at last.

The Road Home tells the story of Lev. Unemployed and grieving for his dead wife, he leaves Eastern Europe for London, where he seeks work to support his ailing mother and young daughter back home. For Lev, the migrant experience is a bewildering one, a collision of his drab, unhopeful life with a world that gleams and glitters and costs a ‘bloody’ fortune. The language, public transportation, the food, even the weather are all unfathomable at first. In time, Lev finds a job at a trendy London restaurant and a room in the flat of Christy Slane, a divorced plumber with an artistic sensibility and an unhealthy fondness for drink. Homesick and adrift, Lev spends most of his time remembering the past, evoking treasured moments with his wife, Marina, and good times spent with his beloved friend, Rudi. Day-to-day experiences intrude on these reveries, however, and Lev soon embraces his new home, embarking on a love affair, getting a promotion, and relishing life for the first time in years. When he hears a dam will be built back home, a project that will flood his village and make his family homeless, it is a call to action. With great effort, Lev brings a piece of the new world back with him and reinvents himself in the process.

Tremain weaves together a vibrant portrait of the migrant experience. Old-fashioned Lev, who kisses the hands of women, the drunk and mournful Christy, the buoyant Rudi, and plain Lydia, with a splash of moles across her face—each is lovingly rendered. These are characters you care about. The Road Home is a sombre work, but the narrative, gently lulling to begin with, builds in force until you won’t want to put it down.(less)

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Mar 11, 2012 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was sad that the book ended. This novel is about Lev who is from Eastern Europe (probably one of the countries that made up the USSR) and leaves his aging mother and young daughter to make his living in London. Before his wife died of cancer he worked in a lumber mill until all the trees were cut down and the mill closed. (Eastern Europe is not the first place to have done this, but we still tsk tsk. I could have been the same story with the fishing industry closed because there were no more f...more I was sad that the book ended. This novel is about Lev who is from Eastern Europe (probably one of the countries that made up the USSR) and leaves his aging mother and young daughter to make his living in London. Before his wife died of cancer he worked in a lumber mill until all the trees were cut down and the mill closed. (Eastern Europe is not the first place to have done this, but we still tsk tsk. I could have been the same story with the fishing industry closed because there were no more fish.)

I read this book because of a review on amazon.com of a recent book I'd read. The previous book about an Indian going to France and becoming a 5 star restauranteur/chef was given only 1 star and we who read her review were told to read "The Road Home".

It was a similar story in that an immigrant made his way up the chain in a restaurant and learned how to cook and then opened his own restaurant. But in this case you can feel all the angst Lev feels at leaving home and making his way in London. You can even feel for all the characters he meets during his stay. The author says Lev is a daydreamer and that is her tool for filling in his history. He recalls his past, events with his best friend, and events with his wife. And we see, step by step, how someone who starts as a pots and pans washer makes his way up the ladder of cookery knowledge.

Although this book won a minor prize, it still had its flaws, such as his Irish friend, Christie, whose marriage broke up because of his excessive drinking. It sure sounded as though he was an alcoholic, but later on Christie is able to continue drinking, but not get drunk. And Lev is around 45 years old and should be even physically older because of the harsh conditions in which he grew up, but he is able to work two very demanding jobs successfully and not keel over or get sick. Maybe it was because he did it for such a short while...perhaps only six months?

His love affair is believable as is the crush that Lydia (a compatriot) has on Lev. A well written story. I will read more of Tremain's books.

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Mar 03, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars

The eminent, award-winning British Author, Rose Tremain, has written another lovely book. The Road Home is about Lev, an eastern European immigrant and his travails and successes in the big city of London. Lev is a widower who has left his child with his mother in Auror, a small town in eastern Europe. Lev hopes to seek his fortune in London, expecting to make a lot of money and be able to send it home to support his family. He has arrived in London with about 100 pounds in his pocket and nothin...more The eminent, award-winning British Author, Rose Tremain, has written another lovely book. The Road Home is about Lev, an eastern European immigrant and his travails and successes in the big city of London. Lev is a widower who has left his child with his mother in Auror, a small town in eastern Europe. Lev hopes to seek his fortune in London, expecting to make a lot of money and be able to send it home to support his family. He has arrived in London with about 100 pounds in his pocket and nothing else. On the bus that takes him from his small town of Auror to the big city, he is seated next to a woman named Lydia who shares her hard boiled eggs with Lev and gives him advice. She is fairly fluent in English and expects to get a job as a translator in England. Lev is Candide-like in his expectations, not really understanding the social or economic influences that will come to play in his life.

Once in London, Lev spends 20 pounds of his 100 pounds for a Bed and Breakfast his first night, naively realizing that the one hundred pounds won't last him very long. He walks into a few establishments asking for work and winds up meeting a man named Ahmed who runs a mid-eastern restaurant. Ahmed hires Lev to distribute fliers at a very small wage. Ahmed, though, is nice to Lev and talks to him about being an immigrant in England. This is a recurrent theme in the book. Despite the difficulty of the immigrant experience, Lev runs into several people who are kind to him and take the time to help him with the huge transition he is facing.

Lev loves to drink vodka, any time any place. He reminisces about his friend Rudi, his best friend, back in Auror. Rudi has a "Tchevy", an old second-hand Chevrolet that he loves like a baby. Lev has wonderful and humorous stories that he shares about his adventures with Rudi and the "Tchevy". In fact, Lev is a dreamer and very caught up in the past in many ways, not always nostalgically like with memories of Rudi and the "Tchevy". Lev thinks a lot about his dead wife, Marina, who he loved very much, and these thoughts haunt him. Marina has been dead for several years now and Lev has yet to have another relationship with a woman. Lev also worries about his daughter and mother, subsisting in Auror.

Lev finds himself sleeping on the streets for a few nights, down and humiliated. He decides to call Lydia for help in finding housing and a job. Lydia left Lev her mobile number but Lev was reluctant to call her, not wanting her to think he was interested in her romantically. Lydia does help Lev secure a job as a dishwasher in a posh restaurant and find a room to rent in a nice neighborhood. However, his relationship with Lydia becomes difficult because Lydia wants more from Lev than just a friendship. Lev has difficulty coping with the challenges he faces with Lydia and frequently behaves impulsively and angrily.

Lev thrives in his restaurant job, realizing that he loves the atmosphere and wants to learn how to cook. He is a very hard worker who also is kind to other employees who are having difficulties with their job. He is very attracted to Sophie, one of the restaurant employees. Lev eventually winds up getting promoted to vegetable cutter and tries to memorize as many of the recipes that he can. When things don't go as planned in his relationship with Sophie, Lev has to leave this job and finds himself hired as a cook at an old-age home where he has done some volunteer work. He is also working as a waiter in a Greek restaurant - - two full-time jobs. He has a secret dream and this sustains him as he works grueling hours to save money.

Lev's housing situation in London goes well. He and his Landlord, Clancy, become friends as well as tenant and renter. Clancy is a plumber who is recently divorced and drinking too much. He is not allowed any time with his daughter except for supervised visits. Lev and Sophie help Clancy to arrange time with his daughter and they all go to the beach together. Clancy and Lev spend hours drinking and talking about their pasts, their present and their dreams.

One of Lev's primary difficulties in London is the culture. He goes to a play about incest and becomes incensed at the theme - - to the point of rage. He thinks about his lovely child back in Auror and can't imagine someone wanting to have sex with their own child. He gets into a fight with someone at the theater and ends up getting into trouble with the police. There is a deep rage in Lev that tends to surface when he is faced with cultural predicaments which he doesn't understand and for which he has no coping skills.

The book is beautifully written with wonderful character development. When I finished the book, Lev, Lydia, Sophie, Marina, Clancy, and Rudi all seemed like real people to me. Ms. Tremain has a gift for fleshing out her characters. I also appreciate her hard look at the problems faced by immigrants and the way that they frequently misconstrue language and cultural differences. The book leaves nothing hanging. By the end, all the elements come together beautifully and we are privy to Lev's dream. This is indeed a wonderful novel.
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Mar 02, 2012 Zina rated it 2 of 5 stars

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...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Shutterbug_iconium rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The writer says she talked to the Polish workers before starting this novel so we assume Lev is polish but to give her imagination a free rein, Tremain made up the names of the places and whatsoever. She tries to show that Britain has become a multinational country which consists of different colors and ethnic backgrounds and she want to cry out for compassion and tolerance for such differences. In a hidden subtext maybe she’s saying that this is actually the ‘cultural cornucopia’ that Britain h...more The writer says she talked to the Polish workers before starting this novel so we assume Lev is polish but to give her imagination a free rein, Tremain made up the names of the places and whatsoever. She tries to show that Britain has become a multinational country which consists of different colors and ethnic backgrounds and she want to cry out for compassion and tolerance for such differences. In a hidden subtext maybe she’s saying that this is actually the ‘cultural cornucopia’ that Britain has come to achieve but I am not sure that she knows her characters well. For example, If she did not deliberately pick a Muslim character like Ahmad I don’t know why Ahmad said something like the following:”

The Koran teaches that deeds of unselfish kindness will be rewarded in heaven. I’ve given you precious food, and for this unselfishness, I will find reward. But now I shall go further. I am going to give you work.
The writer may have wanted to imply that Ahmad was showing off or something but even an average Muslim knows that in Islam alms-giving should be done in a way in somuch as that “The best of alms is that which the right hand giveth, and the left hand knoweth not of.”

So I guess If Tremain worked harder to get to know more immigrants, say, like those two Chinese boys who sexually relaxed Lev or that Muslim kebab guy this book could have been more colorful. The writer should have told the story from the point of a view of a real immigrant, I believe Someone who is not from an EU country. Someone who had to pay bags full of money for a fake passport or something then it would be real thing I suppose. Someone who will be always called “gastarbeiter” even long after his kids can speak only a foreign language or even after he has done everything just to blend in so I am not really convinced either.

Felt astonishment at the idea of that much leisure, that much spare cash flying away into bottles and vials.

Lev gets surprised when he does not understand how art can be so minimalist. The so-called art becomes cutting edge when it becomes shocking like the way a father wants to shag his daughter,the way it is called ‘genius’ by Sophie in the book. Lev is 40 years old and every country produces minimalist art. For instance, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is known all over the world for his art because of his achievements in festivals like Cannes. You don’t need to go to Britain to see people who call a meaningless sex scene “art”. It’s there at the heart of a democratic Muslim country,for instance. I am not so well-informed about those old communist countries but maybe such art was repressed once there. I don’t know.or maybe Lev was not in a place to reach such art in his country.

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Apr 03, 2011 Catherine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library

This is a story that was sad in many places, but ultimately hopeful.

In spite of his circumstances, Lev has lots of good luck - too much to be credible in the opinion of many of the Avid Readers group - but I have a sneaking suspicion that the author may have been a little in love with her creation: she made bad things happen to him, but then couldn't bear to see him struggle for too long. Another criticism made in our discussion was that Lev's outbursts of temper were inconsistent with his char...more

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Dec 20, 2012 mstan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british, displacement, src-winter-2012-13

I'd been wanting to read Rose Tremain for a while - an extract from one of her books was used for an unseen passage in the O-level, and I found the prose quite hypnotic (the passage was about a girl having to pick up stones for her farmer father). But this was quite a let-down. Lev, the Eastern European immigrant, is quite an unlikeable character - (view spoiler)...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

Rose Tremain, "phenomenally adept at slipping into skins very different from her own" (Los Angeles Times), persuasively explores the contemporary immigrant experience through the eyes of a middle-aged, Eastern European man. Lev is not a caricature or a stereotype

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Nov 28, 2009 Melanie Garrett rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who likes Juliet Stevenson

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 08, 2010 Lauren rated it 5 of 5 stars

I adored this book.

Initially I didn't think I'd be interested, because the plot description is: "42-year-old Lev has left his mother and child in his village in Eastern Europe to seek work in London." The story is of his experience in London. This did not sound particularly interesting to me, but I thoroughly enjoyed a book by Rose Tremain last week ("Trespass"), and so, I tried this one, the only other one by Tremain on the Kindle. And I loved it. As with many good books, the subject matter is...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars

I almost gave this five stars and then reverted back to four. Then back to five. Let's call it a solid 4 and a half.

Lev is a middle aged widower from an unnamed Eastern European country. He loses his job in a lumber yard because "they ran out of trees." In an effort to support his mother and his young daughter he travels to London where he has been told he can live on 20 pounds a week. As he says,"I am going to their country and I'm going to make them share it with me: their infernal luck." Lev...more

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Oct 18, 2009 Sheldrake added it

Shelves: fiction

I'm a fan of Rose Tremain. She's written better books than this, although I found her writing here as readable and absorbing as ever. Lev's story is a bit of a fairytale. But, well - sometimes I like a fairytale.

I was less convinced by Tremain's satire on the London arts scene. These characters - amoral, superficial, vain, empty of all meaning - seemed to have wandered in from another novel entirely. It's not even that they were badly written, just that they clashed so badly with the subtlety wi...more

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May 31, 2009 marg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Often I will ride the subway through territory that has been turned into subunits of a foreign country - Littly Italy, China Town etc - and I am left to wonder if this natural drive to the familiar runs counter to why immigrants come here, and what on earth all that means to the kids, and is this a step forward, backward or a necessity? In some ways these musings were addressed in The Road Home, a sensitive and well written tale of a weary man's quest for a decent living in a new land, all the w...more Often I will ride the subway through territory that has been turned into subunits of a foreign country - Littly Italy, China Town etc - and I am left to wonder if this natural drive to the familiar runs counter to why immigrants come here, and what on earth all that means to the kids, and is this a step forward, backward or a necessity? In some ways these musings were addressed in The Road Home, a sensitive and well written tale of a weary man's quest for a decent living in a new land, all the while stumbling his way through it.
Lev, whose name seems to be never be pronounced right by the people he meets, is in his early forties and leaves his small daughter behind after losing both his job and his wife in his unnamed country so he can start over. He encounters several colorful characters along the way; Lydia, the sad soul who sits next to him on the bus ride over and always seem to be his lifeline though never his love, Christy, another transplant who has, in his own way, lost his daughter as well, and often the reader is entertained with tales of Rudi, the archetypal best friend whose humor and loyalty leaps off the page vividly.
Lev's constant rise and fall was so touching that I look differently at the immigrant struggle than I ever have before. That being said, there were issues I had with the work:
1 - Lev's grasp of English was wholy inconsistent - he seemed to manage fine when it came to romance and friends, then at odd moments the very simplest things failed him - was he an immigrant, or not?
2 - THe refusal to name specifically his country of origin was nice by means of ubiquitous theme, but felt unnatural and forced after a while
3 - Lev himself - you want to like him, you really do - but in many ways he is undeveloped - and at time downright rude and violent - it is unclear what to make of those moments as they are often left without any sort of discussion. His plight carries the story but it still feels empty for his not being very knowable
4 - Her usage of ellipses. On occaison, like everything else, the rare ... can develop drama, but more than once or twice and it starts to feel like a 'cue the music' sort of moment and that very moment is cheapened
5 - The ending. Sorry, I know, I know, we all loooove happy endings - but for a work this real and a concept so true to life, to have it all tie up so neat and tidy at the end was not only super far fetched but a rather trite way to conclude what had been built up - an intensely real dilemma with an utter fantastical ending is imbalanced and dissatsifying
All that being said, I loved reading it and felt the work itself easily won four out of five stars while the issues held it from a full five(less)

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May 03, 2011 Monica rated it 3 of 5 stars

Overall this was a very good story. I'd give the book a 3.5 rather than a four just because it was a surprisingly slow read. (C'mon goodreads, allow 1/2 marks!) Not sure why that was - the story is compelling enough that I should have gotten through it in a few days but somehow the first half of the book really dragged.

The story is about a 44 year old Russian man named Lev who leaves his small village to make money in England to support his aging mother and young daughter. His experiences seem v...more

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Nov 26, 2009 Marieke rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2009, orange-prize-winners, oban-library

From the jacket blurb, this sounded really promising. An important contemporary issue. Culturally relevant. Immediate! Orange Prize winner!

Like so many others, Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain, seeking work. He is a tiny part of a vast diaspora that is changing British society at this very moment.

I've been able to see some of the effects of the wave of Eastern European (mostly Polish) immigration here in Scotland over the past couple years. A Polish deli opened here in Oban and t...more From the jacket blurb, this sounded really promising. An important contemporary issue. Culturally relevant. Immediate! Orange Prize winner!

Like so many others, Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain, seeking work. He is a tiny part of a vast diaspora that is changing British society at this very moment.

I've been able to see some of the effects of the wave of Eastern European (mostly Polish) immigration here in Scotland over the past couple years. A Polish deli opened here in Oban and then almost immediately closed down again. People complained in the newspaper about the bus drivers not speaking English. English classes have been in high demand. Many of these newcomers have now left, perhaps gone back home to families with some money in their pockets.

This book was disappointing on so many levels. There were the niggly little things that bugged me throughout, which a good editor should have eliminated. For instance, Tremain went to GREAT lengths to avoid giving Lev a specific country of origin. Every time he met someone 'from his country' (which happened pretty often) you could see Tremain doing an elaborate dance of avoidance around THE COUNTRY WHICH MUST NOT BE NAMED. Awkward.

The list of unbelievable moments is pretty long, as is the list of unconvincing characters. Some examples:

-Newcomer Lev's mobile phone rings during the opening of a fancy classical concert; he runs away. Mortifyingly idiotic.
-Mole-faced compatriot Lydia totally repulses Lev; why then does he keep calling her?
-Sophie the Gorgeous and Sexy Vixen ends up being just as treacherous as Christy the Bitter Irishman had predicted. Go figure.
-Lev leaves London for a bizarre but brief interlude in the asparagus fields where he gets seduced by two indistinguishable, effeminate Chinese boys. No follow up to this; he goes back to London and carries on where he left off, training to be a chef. Whatever!
-Lydia becomes pampered mistress to ancient symphony conductor from 'their country' and never calls Lev back.

I did like some bits. The pompous, showy chef GK Ashe is hilarious as a portrait of the enormous EGO you might expect to find behind a high-end urban restaurant. Kitchen assistant Simone's irreverent menus for the old-people's home made me laugh aloud for several minutes.

Creme brulee jacked... from a recipe at GK Ashe
or
Watermelon sorbet with no black seeds or rubbish in it

Overall, I found Lev's character too inconsistent to follow intimately. He was brilliant and talented one minute and then a blockhead the next. He also struck me as weirdly emotionless. The other characters, such as Rudi, made wonderful sidekicks, but I wanted Lev to call the shots. He's the chef, after all?(less)

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Feb 09, 2013 Bronwyn Mcloughlin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this story. There have been a lot of books written about eastern european migrants in Britain, and you'd think it has been done to death. But this is a tremendous story that explores how hard it is for some people to scrape a living, to do what's right for the people they leave behind, to try and learn enough and become skilled enough without being exploited, and to get ahead in a land that is not their own. Its a reflection of British society, of love and age, of government bur...more

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About Rose Tremain

Rose Tremain is the author of fifteen works of fiction, including The Road Home, winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, and Restoration, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She lives in Norfolk and north London.
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“When you’re old nobody touches you nobody listens to you—not in this bloody country.so that’s what I do. I touch and I listen.” — 2 people liked it

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