Winning this year’s Orange Prize for her novel ‘The Road Home’ has brought Rose Tremain a level of critical acclaim and public attention that many of her loyal readers consider long over due. On Friday 29 August a mixed bag of Tremain aficionados and new readers met at the home of Marilyn and Patrick Pietroni to discuss the merits and the appeal of her account of the immigrant experience in Britain. The discussion, like the excellent supper provided by our hosts, was full flavoured, nourishing fare that worked as well to pique the appetite as to satisfy it.
Few punches were pulled as people spoke with frankness and in equal measure about both the novel’s universal appeal and the magnitude of its failings. The former, I believe it’s true to say, focused chiefly upon the subject matter, the latter the writerly success with which Tremain explored it.
Tremain has chosen a subject which can hardly fail to compel – the experience of the outsider in search of a new future. Her hero Lev, of undetermined Eastern European origin, is presented as a kind of universal every man, whose odyssey reveals the weaknesses and hypocrisies of a society where the fear of difference frequently reveals itself as active hostility or – worse still, perhaps – passive neglect.
But there were concerns among the group as to how honest an account of migrant life Tremain actually offers. While many of the stock images of the migrant experience are there – accidental arrests, misunderstandings of language and intent, impoverished working environments, exploitation and patronisation – many felt that the tale lacked the gritty realism needed to make it credible. After all, though Lev endures his share of hardships, he triumphs in the end. And he is aided along the way by a series of beneficent supporters who’s tendency to pop up exactly when they’re most needed stretched the credulity of at least this cynical reader. All in all, one can’t help but be left with the feeling that the migrant experience isn’t all that bad, actually, as Lev makes the transformation from displaced worker to capitalist entrepreneur with surprising ease. His experience is, in the long run, a tacit reinforcement of ‘on yer bike’ cultural values that Normal Tebbitt (remember him?) would have recognised and applauded.
Fortunately, the journey from Baryn to London and back again isn’t the only one that Lev makes and, to the minds of many in the group, it is the second journey which Tremain describes with more profound insight and genuine empathy. Lev’s real journey home is the journey back from loss to belonging. As the novel opens Lev has lost his love, his livelihood and his home. With them, has gone his sense of worth. As the bus carries him relentlessly across Europe he is leaving behind all that has anchored him to the past and motivated his expectations for the future. His greatest ambition now is only to survive and to endure.
That he finally discovers within himself the ability to begin again, to turn a barren (Baryn) existence into one that promises new life, not just for him, but for his small community of family and friends, is Lev’s real triumph. And it is the account of this second journey which is Tremain’s real achievement.
So, all in all, we agreed to acknowledge but set aside concerns about the believability of some of the books minor characters, the stereotypical depiction of the London arts scene and the novel’s sometimes creaky narrative infrastructure to conclude that Tremain has written a good book, though not a great one.
On whether it was a worthy winner of the Orange we were divided. There was a general feeling amongst those who had read Tremain extensively that she has produced other novels with greater merit. Having not read them, I cannot say. Yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that it was Tremain’s subject matter, rather than the quality of her writing, that captured the judges’ attention in this case. Perhaps they, like so many of us, want to believe we’re not such a bad lot after all, that we understand the plight of the outsider and behave differently – and better – than our fellows. In doing so, however, do they run the risk of turning Tremain’s book into a politically correct fashion accessory, rather as Sophie made of Lev when she paraded him, uncomfortable in his too-expensive suede jacket, to boost her own kudos among her literary friends.
Few punches were pulled as people spoke with frankness and in equal measure about both the novel’s universal appeal and the magnitude of its failings. The former, I believe it’s true to say, focused chiefly upon the subject matter, the latter the writerly success with which Tremain explored it.
Tremain has chosen a subject which can hardly fail to compel – the experience of the outsider in search of a new future. Her hero Lev, of undetermined Eastern European origin, is presented as a kind of universal every man, whose odyssey reveals the weaknesses and hypocrisies of a society where the fear of difference frequently reveals itself as active hostility or – worse still, perhaps – passive neglect.
But there were concerns among the group as to how honest an account of migrant life Tremain actually offers. While many of the stock images of the migrant experience are there – accidental arrests, misunderstandings of language and intent, impoverished working environments, exploitation and patronisation – many felt that the tale lacked the gritty realism needed to make it credible. After all, though Lev endures his share of hardships, he triumphs in the end. And he is aided along the way by a series of beneficent supporters who’s tendency to pop up exactly when they’re most needed stretched the credulity of at least this cynical reader. All in all, one can’t help but be left with the feeling that the migrant experience isn’t all that bad, actually, as Lev makes the transformation from displaced worker to capitalist entrepreneur with surprising ease. His experience is, in the long run, a tacit reinforcement of ‘on yer bike’ cultural values that Normal Tebbitt (remember him?) would have recognised and applauded.
Fortunately, the journey from Baryn to London and back again isn’t the only one that Lev makes and, to the minds of many in the group, it is the second journey which Tremain describes with more profound insight and genuine empathy. Lev’s real journey home is the journey back from loss to belonging. As the novel opens Lev has lost his love, his livelihood and his home. With them, has gone his sense of worth. As the bus carries him relentlessly across Europe he is leaving behind all that has anchored him to the past and motivated his expectations for the future. His greatest ambition now is only to survive and to endure.
That he finally discovers within himself the ability to begin again, to turn a barren (Baryn) existence into one that promises new life, not just for him, but for his small community of family and friends, is Lev’s real triumph. And it is the account of this second journey which is Tremain’s real achievement.
So, all in all, we agreed to acknowledge but set aside concerns about the believability of some of the books minor characters, the stereotypical depiction of the London arts scene and the novel’s sometimes creaky narrative infrastructure to conclude that Tremain has written a good book, though not a great one.
On whether it was a worthy winner of the Orange we were divided. There was a general feeling amongst those who had read Tremain extensively that she has produced other novels with greater merit. Having not read them, I cannot say. Yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that it was Tremain’s subject matter, rather than the quality of her writing, that captured the judges’ attention in this case. Perhaps they, like so many of us, want to believe we’re not such a bad lot after all, that we understand the plight of the outsider and behave differently – and better – than our fellows. In doing so, however, do they run the risk of turning Tremain’s book into a politically correct fashion accessory, rather as Sophie made of Lev when she paraded him, uncomfortable in his too-expensive suede jacket, to boost her own kudos among her literary friends.
Annie Garthwaite.
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