The Road Home (2008)
Who wrote it?
Rose Tremain (1943- ; active 1976- ), born London, UK. She was born Rosemary Jane Thomson, marrying Jon Tremain in 1971. though the marriage lasted only five years. She studied at the Sorbonne for two years before studying English Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norfolk (where she still lives).
She has written fairly prolifically, with 16 novels, 5 short story collections, a children’s book and a memoir amongst her output. Her debut Sadler’s Birthday (1976) attracted attention from the literary establishment and marked her out as ‘promising’. Her first award was the 1984 Dylan Thomas Prize, then for young authors, by which time she was already a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She was Booker shortlisted in 1989 for Restoration, a historical novel set in the reign of Charles II (a tough year: The Remains of the Day, one of my favourites, went on to take the Prize). She had judged the Booker in 1988, and went on to do so again in 2000, but to date has not been shortlisted again. She won the Whitbread Prize in 1999 for Music and Silence (another historical novel) and was shortlisted again (in the Prize’s later Costa incarnation) for The Gustav Sonata in 2017, which was also longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Her most recent novel is Lily: A Tale of Revenge (2021) and in 2020 she was awarded a Damehood for her services to literature.
What's it about?
The Road Home focuses on Lev, a middle-aged widower from an unspecified Eastern European country (possibly Poland), as he travels to London with the goal of making money to support his young daughter who stays back home with his mother. The novel begins as one of survival, as Lev acclimatises to the harsh realities of living in London with no money and no job. He initially sleeps rough and makes small change delivering leaflets for a kebab shop, before landing a job as a dish-washer (or “nurse”) in the high pressure kitchen of GK Ashe, a fine-dining, Gordon Ramsey style establishment. He eventually finds himself a (child size) room with recent Irish divorcee Christy, with whom he forms an endearing friendship.
Along the way, he rejects the advances of his well-meaning compatriot Lydia, falls for GK Ashe sous chef Sophie, and manages to disgrace himself with both women, in the latter case finding himself sacked from the restaurant. For a time, he falls into despair and moves to the East Anglian countryside and lives as a vegetable picker with other immigrants, having seemingly lost hope of improving his lot in life. Via regular calls to his best pal back home, Rudi, he discovers that the government back home is planning to erect a dam in the vicinity of his home village that will flood the area and lead to forced evictions. This spurs him back to action, formulating a plan to support his family and friends back home and play a role in the regeneration of his region. The novel ends with him having achieved his goals, but still pondering what has been lost along the way.
What I liked
It’s an easy, compelling read. A page turner, for sure. I was invested in the well-drawn central character and keen to find out where life took him. It’s one of the more straightforwardly ‘readable’ winners of the two major Prizes I’ve been reading. It’s a simple, linear narrative with no deep subtext or particular showiness.
It’s funny, in fact feeling broadly comic in tone despite tackling some ‘issues’ along the way. The humour is relatable, down to earth, and not the sort of bleak humour that often permeates prizewinners. Rudi and his ’Tchevi’ reminded me very much of the humour in Everything is Illuminated - a warm-hearted comic portrayal of a certain type of Eastern European.
As reviewers even at the time commented, it’s a bold move by Tremain as an English writer to tackle immigration so thoroughly from the perspective of an immigrant. Yet it’s a broadly successful risk - her depiction of Lev is humane and likeable, and it feels like Tremain has a deep empathy for him and his counterparts. As I note below, it’s not flawless but in general it’s done well.
Novels dealing with very timely and contemporarily relevant issues feel surprisingly few and far between among the major prizewinners,. so it’s always somewhat refreshing when they do show up like this.
It’s a deeply felt and emotional book in places, particularly around the two men’s relationship with their young daughters.
What I didn’t like
In general, it felt a little too ‘cosy’ for my liking. I get that that’s probably a part of its popularity, but it rarely feels truly reflective of the way the world works. It’s a broadly optimistic novel, determined to find the good in everyone and everything, and ends up on occasion feeling a little oversimplified and ‘inspirational quote’-like. I can’t help but feeling that it’s a product of its time - reflecting a liberal positivity towards immigration that is hugely commendable but leads to a lack of real interrogation of the pernicious forces that we’re all too aware of now that oppose immigration, and were undoubtedly present at the time in more threatening forms than we see in The Road Home. I guess we’ve been through a lot as a country since 2008. I’d almost love to see Tremain return to Lev’s story somehow post-Brexit and see if that spirit of optimism bears scrutiny in 2022.
There’s also a little too much reliance on coincidence and unlikely happenings. Quite a lot of suspension of disbelief is required for what’s essentially a realist novel, from the minor (Lev has to scrape together the pennies to eat but has seemingly infinite phone calls available to dial Rudi & co back home) to the more significant (Tremain speeds through his unlikely rapid accumulation of a large sum of money with the speed of an uplifting montage in a cheesy movie - we’re not given any insight into life working 2 jobs for 6 days a week, it’s just a convenient way of having him - supposedly quickly - rack up the necessary cash).
(Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh here - Make it bleaker! Make it less fun! - but it just feels a bit fluffy compared to many prize winners)
I really didn’t enjoy the caricatures of London celebs being used as significant characters. GK Ashe is pretty obviously Gordon Ramsey but just about bearably not exactly the same, whereas the guy that essentially is Damien Hirst was just too irritating for my liking. Their existence made me think of that later period Adrian Mole book where he works in a London kitchen. Either that or something out of a Bridget Jones book. Much as I love Mole, too incongruous by far here.
OK, after all that, let’s examine the real crime here: that cover. We all know never to judge a book by it, but this one is surely is taking that challenge and running with it.. to an extreme?! Can someone please explain to me what it has to do with a book that’s primarily based in the gritty urban landscape of London? If it was a dammed reservoir, or something, fine, or an asparagus field (pretty sure it’s not that at least) but otherwise… WTF?
Food & drink pairings
Vodka
Guinness
Sunday Roast; proper gravy
Fun facts
This was the second unfortunate year in which the Women’s Prize had to go by the particularly ugly title of the “Orange Broadband Prize For Fiction” - thankfully it was also the last, and it reverted to the marginally less woeful Orange Prize in 2009.
Much like the 2008 Booker winner, which tackled issues relating to the Financial Crisis, The Road Home was an especially topical-feeling winner. Recent years had seen the admission of several Eastern European countries to the EU, marking the start of an extended period of fretting around ‘immigrants taking our jobs’ and other such nonsense in Britain.
Speaking of topical, one of the 2008 judging panel was none-more-2008 pop star Lily Allen. She ultimately had to pull out though, citing ‘personal reasons’.
There was a fair bit of chatter at the time about whether this was one of those ‘lifetime achievement’ type award nods, for an author who was widely loved, critically acclaimed, onto her 11th novel and had never won the Booker (despite twice sitting on the judging panel) or the Orange. Consensus seemed to be though that while that made some sense as a narrative, the novel was a genuine critical and commercial success and therefore ultimately probably not guilty in this case.
Vanquished Foes
Nancy Huston (Fault Lines)
Sadie Jones (The Outcast)
Charlotte Mendelson (When We Were Bad)
Heather O'Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals)
Patricia Wood (Lottery)
Not read any of these and very little Booker overlap going on around this point either.
2008’s Booker winner was the excellent The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
Context
In 2008:
Global Financial Crisis
Barack Obama elected POTUS
Terrorist attacks across Mumbai kill 164
Sichuan Earthquake kills an estimated 87000 in China
Kosovo formally declares independence from Serbia
Georgia invades South Ossetia, sparking a war with Russia
Nepal votes to abolish its monarchy
Large Hadron Collider inaugurated in Geneva
Boris Johnson becomes Mayor of London
Beijing Summer Olympics
First all-English European Cup final sees Manchester United beat Chelsea
Lewis Hamilton wins his first Formula 1 World Championship
First release of Android mobile operating system
Bitcoin concept authored by Satoshi Nakamoto
Launch of Spotify in Sweden
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
The Dark Knight
Wall-E
Slumdog Millionaire
In Bruges
Beyonce, I Am.. Sasha Fierce
Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
Lady Gaga, The Fame
Life Lessons
Life as am immigrant is hard but ultimately you’ll get by if you work really hard
That casual racism that you hear everywhere around you? Just amusing bants, mate.
There is good is everyone and everything - stick that on your poster of a sunset
Even if you get mostly what you want, you’ll still be a bit sad if they turn your village into a reservoir
Score
7.5
A largely enjoyable read with a likeable central character and a real sense of the time in which it was set and written. But a bit flimsy in some ways and a bit dated - always a risk with ‘topical’ novels: history moves fast.
I gave 2008 Booker winner The White Tiger 9/10 - a great book which is worth checking out if you haven’t.
Ranking to date:
Property (2003) - Valerie Martin - 9.5
The Idea of Perfection (2001) - Kate Grenville - 9
Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 9
When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) - Linda Grant - 9
Larry’s Party (1998) - Carol Shields - 8.5
Bel Canto (2002) - Ann Patchett - 8.5
Small Island (2004) - Andrea Levy - 8.5
A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999) - Suzanne Berne - 8.5
On Beauty (2006) - Zadie Smith - 8
A Spell of Winter (1996) - Helen Dunmore - 8
The Road Home (2008) - Rose Tremain - 7.5
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005) - Lionel Shriver - 7.5
Fugitive Pieces (1997) - Anne Michaels - 6.5
Next up
Another brief diversion before returning to the Women’s Prize with 2009’s Home by Marilynne Robinson.
