2008-07-21 One of the best novels I've read this year

I enjoyed this novel so much that when I was three quarters of the way through I went back to the beginning and started again! Tremain is an excellent writer. Her prose is full of colourful images and she has an eye for the quirky, the absurd, which makes for an entertaining read. In this tale the line between tragedy and comedy is finely walked. Lev is a beguiling hero - in many ways brave and admirable, but also flawed. His story is sad, sometimes brutal, but always handled with compassion. This novel could easily be read as a treatise on the plight of the immigrant worker - but it is more complex than that. Ultimately it is about the irrepressiblity of the human spirit and I loved it.