The story of one man's quest to get home
1:44pm Thursday 7th August 2008
THIS month’s Book Group selection is the winner of the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction, The Road Home by Rose Tremain.
As the novel opens, widower Lev is at the start of a long journey away from his home in an unnamed Eastern European country, heading towards the UK to find a way to improve life for his five-year-old daughter Maya and his mother.
He soon discovers that not only are the streets of London not paved with gold, but the optimistic budget his friend Rudi has predicted is woefully inadequate.
The £20 a week that Rudi thinks Lev needs to survive is a long way short of reality. Lev sees his first night’s accommodation swallow a week’s money and he is soon sleeping rough.
His fortunes take a turn for the better when he reluctantly asks for help from Lydia, a translator he met on the journey from his home country, and he is soon working as a kitchen porter in a glitzy restaurant, lodging with the recently divorced Christy and embarking on a passionate relationship with his fellow worker, Sophie.
But nothing in his future is assured and his doomed love affair with Sophie sees his fragile new existence threatened.
And then devastating news comes from home and Lev must draw on all his resources and newly acquired skills to find “the road home”.
The comfort of strangers and the solace of food are recurring themes in an elegantly written novel that movingly explores what it is to be an economic migrant.
Through the story of one individual, Rose Tremain powerfully creates empathy and understanding of a group of people who are largely unknown to us.
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
Food is a significant element throughout The Road Home. Why do you think Rose Tremain choose to counterpoint his story in this way?
Lev’s relationships with his late wife, Marina, and with Sophie are passionate and romantic, but both have a dark side. Why does he struggle with relationships with women?
Lev leaves his home with little but hope. If you were in a similar position, could you leave everything in pursuit of a better life?
In an interview about The Road Home, Rose Tremain said that she believed that “most Brits want to be welcoming to migrants, but have worries – or extreme anxieties – of their own, which sometimes prevent them doing this”.
Is her belief borne out in Herefordshire, a county with a significant migrant population?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rose Tremain’s first novel, Sadler’s Birthday, was published in 1976, since when she has written a further 10 novels, among them Restoration and The Colour (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and short story collections.
She is also the author of a number of radio and TV plays, including Temporary Shelter, which won a Giles Cooper Award.
Tremain, who was educated at the Sorbonne and is a graduate of the University of East Anglia, where she taught creative writing from 1988-95, was awarded the CBE for services to literature in the 2007 Queen’s Birthday Honours, and has won many literary prizes in the course of her career, including the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
HOW TO ORDER
The Road Home – RRP £7.99, offer price £7.59 post and packing free; Music and Silence £7.99 offer £7.59; Sacred Country £7.99 offer £7.59; The Colour £7.99; The Darkness of Wallis Simpson; £7.99 offer £7.59; Sadler's Birthday £7.99 offer £7.59; The Swimming Pool Season £7.99 offer £7.59.
To order, call the Hereford Times Bookshop on 08700 713317 or send your cheque/postal order made payable to Hereford Times Bookshop to: Hereford Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston, TR13 0TP. Allow seven to 10 working days for delivery.
All titles supplied subject to publisher availability. To order online, visit sparkledirect.com
THERE’S a bundle of Vintage Books to be won in this month’s Book Group competition.
Let us know what you think about The Road Home and your review could win you the prize.
Visit herefordtimes.com and click on the link to the Book Group or write to us at HT Book Group, Hereford Times, Holmer Road, Hereford HR4 9UJ, with your review, name, address and contact details.
The winning review will also appear in next month’s HT Book Group. Usual competition rules apply. Deadline is midnight on Monday, September 1.