A true and honest love story. (A Partisan's Daughter - Louis de Bernieres)

Member Name: aljwoods

Product:	A Partisan's Daughter - Louis de Bernieres
Date:	16/06/09 (10 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's utterly moving.

Disadvantages: It'll break your heart.

Louis de Berniers never fails to move me and while this is not his best work it is remarkable in its ability to truly understand what People are like. It's a baffling journey through the unlikely relationship struck up between a sad, lonely, middle aged man, Chris, and a sad, lonely young woman, Roza, who have been brought together in the most unlikely fashion.

Chris, who is apparently not the kind of man who picks girls up, on impulse and thinking that Roza, a young Yugoslav girl living in Archway, is a prostitute (which indeed she once was) clumsily attempts to proposition her. They form a curious attachment and during Chris' frequent visits, Rosa spends her time smoking filthy cigarettes in her equally filthy basement telling Chris stories (of dubious veracity) of her life, her sexual awakening and development, and her journey towards becoming the person he knows.

Chris, whose interest in Roza is always explicitly sexual despite the feelings he eventually develops towards her, is a docile audience sharing little of his own life with her largely because he has so little to share. The poignancy of his stories is all the greater because of this and I felt equal waves of compassion and pity towards this quite unremarkable man, for all that he had, for that he had wanted to have, and for all that he had failed to achieve in ways very different to that I felt for Roza who, despite being a pitiable and pitiful character, I could never decide whether to trust.

Without wishing to give anything away, the manner in which he behaves towards the end of the book is predictable, frustrating, heartbreaking, and utterly, utterly human. It may not be a fairy tale ending but it highlights de Berniers' complete understanding of human nature.

De Berniers is a master at drawing his reader in. The stories Roza tells are often banal and ordinary. Stories about the ordinary lives or ordinary people. There is not the soaring intellect and philosophy that is characteristic of so much of his other work, this is just a book about ordinary people, one of whom has had a very ordinary life, the other (if she can be believed) a quite extraordinary one. But both have reached this point as a result of the decisions they made, of the opportunities they took and those they failed to take, and it draws you in utterly.

I'm no literary reviewer, and I don't want to give anything away. But I really encourage anyone and everyone to read this. It is essentially a story human loss, of love and a love affair that never realises itself, and of the foolish things People do for, and because of, love.

Summary: "A story of human sadness"