Author:Rose Tremain
'Rose Tremain does not disappoint. As always her writing has a delicious, crunchy precision.' Observer
A wise and witty look at the contemporary migrant experience.
Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain, seeking work. Behind him loom the figures of his dead wife, his beloved young daughter and his outrageous friend Rudi who - dreaming of the wealthy West - lives largely for his battered Chevrolet. Ahead of Lev lies the deep strangeness of the British: their hostile streets, their clannish pubs, their obsession with celebrity. London holds out the alluring possibility of friendship, sex, money and a new career and, if Lev is lucky, a new sense of belonging...
'A novel of urgent humanity' Sunday Telegraph
A novel of urgent humanity
—— Sunday TelegraphRose Tremain does not disappoint. The Road Home is thematically rich, dealing with loss and separation, mourning and melancholia... As always her writing has a delicious, crunchy precision
—— ObserverFilled with emotional richness, complex sensibility and a passionate insistence on the humanity of the poor
—— Sunday TimesA classic work by the gifted Tremain
—— Guardian'Tremain is a magnificent story-teller'
—— Independent on sunday...bravely imaginative, deeply moving, surprising, invigorating and satisfying
—— IndependentLuminous talent for the fusion of the extraordinary and the commonplace
—— Sunday TelegraphI can't think of a better sentence-to-sentence writer of fiction
—— Irish TimesA strikingly alert and humane profile of migrant labour... wild and beautiful and full of woe
—— Sunday HeraldVivid, original and always engaging
—— The TimesThis is a humane and moving account of the migrant experience in contemporary London, full of understanding and compassion about the difficulties of alienation and belonging
—— Mail on SundayHere, as in her best work, Tremain achieves a remarkable synthesis of fully realised character and the systematic observation of a world.The Road Home is a subtle and challenging account of a story we think we know already and of a person we all too often reduce to nothing more than a political issue or a statistic.
—— Lavinia Greenlaw , Financial TimesRose Tremain is a novelist of style, ambition and lyrical sensibility...This is a generous, sweet-tempered book
—— Sunday TimesA magnificent achievement from a writer at the height of her very considerable powers
—— Daily MailRose Tremain is an old-fashioned writer, in the best of ways: we care about her characters' sorrows and hope for their happiness
—— Daily TelegraphTremain allows us to see our country's wonders and failings as if for the first time
—— GlamourA dark fable... Mackintosh sensitively conveys resonant questions about motherhood, female solidarity, queer love, and bodily autonomy
—— New YorkerCool, disturbing, it deals with emotionally fraught material. Mackintosh traffics in ambivalence and ambiguity... What Calla really wants, the author shows us, isn't necessarily a baby; it's an answer
—— Washington PostA spare, haunting tale of autonomy and free will
—— Anthony Cummins , Daily MailBoth claustrophobic and expansive, dream-like and heart-stoppingly tense. You will want to languish in its world for a very long time
—— Lara Williams, author of 'Supper Club'This book left me breathless - it is gloriously subversive in its exploration of motherhood and desire. I'll be pressing it on everyone
—— Angela Chadwick, author of 'XX'Strange and luminous, spare and precise... A thrilling exploration of what it means to follow one's own longing to the point of destruction and beyond
—— Rosie Price, author of 'What Red Was'Utterly exquisite - clever and brilliant and heartbreaking. From the dusty road to the salving forest, I absolutely adored it
—— Emma Jane Unsworth, author of 'Adults' and 'Animals'Chilling, haunting, heartbreaking... Mackintosh brings a new sense of pathos to the dystopian novel... A moving and original meditation on freedom, fate, and women's rage
—— Kirkus, Starred ReviewA dreamlike exploration of free will and desire
—— MonocleA must for Handmaid's Tale aficionados
—— BooklistPowerful, Ishiguro-esque... Sophie Mackintosh lays bare many of the fears and realities that face any society's women as they contemplate when their choices begin, and where they might end
—— Boston GlobeTold with ragged prose that catches the breath, [Blue Ticket] articulates the irrepressible desires and wounds that can lie deep within, marked by a claustrophobia that never stops pressing in from the margins. This unsettling reimagining of the anxieties and pressures around motherhood lays bare the alienation that comes when your body is not truly yours
—— Irish NewsA darkly brilliant allegory... Astute, revelatory and heartbreaking
—— Heather O’Neill, author of 'The Lonely Hearts Hotel'A rich, sharp, and daring book. To read Blue Ticket is to feel so vigorously alert you can feel the world turning
—— Heidi Sopinka, author of 'The Dictionary of Animal Languages'Mesmerising
—— Daily NerdMackintosh poses urgent questions about social expectations and free will that are relevant to all realities
—— Poets and WritersIrresistible storytelling that slides between the present day and a mythic realm… A heady delight
—— Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2019*The novel draws on Shakespeare and Greek legend, and is the sort of mile-a-minute adventure you can get lost in for hours without realising
—— ShortList, *Summer Reads of 2019*[The Porpoise] confirms the sense of a gifted writer letting his talent off the leash at last… Mind-bending yet marvellously readable, it stakes Haddon’s claim to be one of the best writers in Britain right now
—— Daily Mail, *Summer reads of 2019*Haddon conveys all this with startling granularity: the stinking, seething Jacobean London traversed by the ghosts of Wilkins and Shakespeare… Haddon's novel creates, throughout, a looming sense that something very bad but not quite perceptible is in the process of unfolding: a terrible half-glimpsed fate that the characters are powerless to resist
—— Adam Smyth , London Review of BooksThe Porpoise begins as a page-turning thriller and soon shifts into something slippery and strange – but remains propulsive throughout
—— New StatesmanMark Haddon’s best novel yet. The Porpoise begins as a propulsive thriller…and segues into a classical-world adventure that reinvents the story of Pericles in prose of a hallucinatory vividness
—— Justine Jordan , Guardian, *Books of the Year*The Porpoise reworks legend with the compelling force of a thriller
—— Lindsey Hilsum , Observer, *Books of the Year*[An] exquisite retelling of Shakespeare’s Pericles
—— Claire Allfree , Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*Thrilling, dramatic and exquisitely written, The Porpoise combines myth and reality to enthralling effect
—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail