The Road Home

Categories: Staff Picks , Fiction

2008 was a very good year for books.  Unfortunately, it wasn't any longer than the average year, so I am behind, behind, behind in reading all of the 2008 titles I have had on my must list for months.

Rose Tremain's The Road Home (which was actually published in England in 2007, but let's not make me feel any tardier) was one I wrote down as soon as I saw the first notices, since her gorgeously literary and quirkily original novels always appeal to me.

I'm glad I finally got to it.  It was a deeply satisfying read.  And it's less odd than some of her other work, so it would be a good place to start if you haven't read any of her books.

Lev is an immigrant from eastern Europe to London.  He has left his mother, young daughter, and best friend back home where work is scarce (the sawmill has closed) and he is lonely (his wife has died) to try his fortune in England.

Of course, life is hard and lonely in London, too, but Lev makes friends, from the fellow traveler he met on the cross-continent bus to the lugubrious Irishman from whom he rents a room.  And he finds a job as dishwasher in a posh restaurant, where he tastes miraculous food and conceives the ambition of learning to cook it himself.

A little ambition, a little romance--it looks as though Lev may make a life in his new country.  But bad news from the old country complicates his dreams.

To say any more about the plot is to say too much, but you'll find yourself turning pages late into the night to find out what happens next. 

Is the novel realistic about the immigrant experience?  Maybe not.  But it's wonderfully, appealingly human.