The Road Home by Rose Tremain was another of my 60 Books from 60 years about immigration. I have also read White Teeth (see review here) and Small Island (review here). Both those books talked about immigration from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent but the more recent story is about immigration from Eastern Europe when that was easier when Britain was part of the EU.
Lev comes from an Eastern European country which is not named in the book. He has been widowed and has a small daughter who he leaves in the care of his mother. Things are not good at home and his aim is to send back sufficient money for his family to live. He arrives in London knowing no one and having no real preparations for his life in the UK except that he speaks reasonable English. During the course of the book he will be robbed, find and lose work, be homeless, make friends, get into and out of a relationship, be attacked in the street and find a way to make enough money to return home and make a new life for himself. The author explores many issues affecting migrants including discrimination, loneliness, exploitation and opportunity. Lev is continually thinking about his life at home and contrasting it with the UK so the reader learns about his family and his best friend and the corruption of his birth country.
This book took me ages to read – possibly longer than any of the other books on my list. I found it very easy to put down and difficult to pick up again. It isn’t a bad book and is well written and insightful but it didn’t capture my interest and I struggled to finish it. In the end I thought that this was probably because Lev seems to lack initiative and is bounced from one event to another by the actions of others – even his ultimate plan for what he will do when he returns home comes to him by chance. He makes friends who assist him but he doesn’t seem to do much to uphold his side of the friendships and he is easily preyed upon. I didn’t find him a strong enough character to hold the book together for me.
This is a good book but I didn’t enjoy it. Every novel isn’t for every reader and this one was not for me.
Anne Is Reading 