The Road Home: A Novel

Tremain, Rose

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316002615 ISBN 13: 9780316002615

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2008

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.

Review:

"Timely and moving." -- TimeOut "Sophie Fels"

.,."[Tremain} proves herself again magically capable of animating a character from the inside out, illuminating the heart of one modern exile with an extraordinary degree of love, imagination and insight. The pleasure, the wit and the joy in humanity that Tremain brings to every page do what literature, at its best, should do: connect us, as E.M. Forster famously exhorted. Particularly, connect us to the invisible, the lonely, the barely seen." -- Los Angeles Times "Stacey D'Erasmo"

"Timely and moving." -- TimeOut "Sophie Fels"

"Timely and moving."--TimeOut "Sophie Fels "

"The Road Home is thematically rich, dealing with loss and separation, mourning and melancholia....As always, Tremain's writing has a delicious, crunchy precision." Edward Marriott, "The Observer (UK)""

"Like Amy Bloom's recent novel, "Away", or Ha Jin's "A Free Life", Whitbread Award winner Tremain has written a worthy addition to the growing body of work centered on the loneliness and frustration of the immigrant experience." "Library Journal""

."..[Tremain} proves herself again magically capable of animating a character from the inside out, illuminating the heart of one modern exile with an extraordinary degree of love, imagination and insight. The pleasure, the wit and the joy in humanity that Tremain brings to every page do what literature, at its best, should do: connect us, as E.M. Forster famously exhorted. Particularly, connect us to the invisible, the lonely, the barely seen." Stacey D'Erasmo, "Los Angeles Times""

"Timely and moving." Sophie Fels, "TimeOut""

"Like Amy Bloom's recent novel, "Away," or Ha Jin's "A Free Life," Whitbread Award winner Tremain has written a worthy addition to the growing body of work centered on the loneliness and frustration of the immigrant experience." "Library Journal""

"Timely and moving." Sophie Fels, TimeOut"

Book Description:

WINNER OF THE 2008 ORANGE BROADBAND PRIZE FOR FICTION

Rose Tremain's hugely enjoyable new novel is the up-to-the-minute story of Lev, newly arrived in London from Eastern Europe. A wise and witty look at the contemporary migrant experience.