Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3797 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

The Guardian
`It's a wise and moving novel, perfectly accomplished.'

Tatler
'The author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin gives us and bittersweet love story set in Seventies London'

Daily Telegraph
'De Bernieres is a skilful writer, poetic but unforced'

Customer Reviews

Annoying and disappointing
Undeveloped, cold, boring and a touch misogynistic I advise you to not waste your time reading this empty novel. Lazy writing and cruising on his famous name. An English A level student could do better.

Uninvolving
As an avid reader and fan of just about everything that Louis de Bernières has written I was relishing the prospect of another broadly-painted and entertaining novel peopled with engaging characters. It was therefore disappointing to reach the end of A Partisan's Daughter feeling little in the way of involvement with the main characters and little sympathy with either of them. I agree with another reviewer that this book is really more of a long short story but it lacks the succinctness and directness that a well-written short story often so successfully conveys (see, for example, Adam Marek's Instruction Manual for Swallowing).

Like watching a tennis match
Disaffected husband Christian is finally driven to seek a street-walker for relief. The encounter proves entirely unfulfilling, since the young woman he attempts to pick up declares otherwise. Roza, however, perceiving his confusion and embarrassment, decides he's harmless and invites him to return - on a platonic basis. The invitation leads Chris to becoming an adoring recipient of Roza's relation of her past life. In this brief compression of Roza's life and Chris' reaction to her tale, de Bernieres demonstrates that brevity can encompass much.

Who is Roza? Chris never confronts that question directly. Instead, he lets her account of her life, implausible as much of it seems, wash over him. He accepts whatever she tells him at face value. He's shocked at much of it, of course. Roza is the daughter of a fighter for the Old Man - Tito - against the Nazi invaders of Yugoslavia. He's tough, and that trait has passed on to her. Roza's father is a sentimentalist as well, however, and she possesses that sense, also. Although it's never made clear how he managed the costs, Roza's parent sends her to university. Predictably, her first love is found there - except it isn't.

De Bernieres passes the narration from Roza to Chris almost seamlessly. You are taken into one character's confidence only to be snatched away by the other. Feelings are dumped on you whether you wish them or not. Nothing here is hidden - or at least you are told what the narrator wishes you to learn. As you read, you are confronted with stark contrasts. Both characters are born out of their time. Chris watches the mixture of excitement and despair of 1970s Britain. Life among the young is less constrained, more experimental and free-thinking than he's used to. But Roza's flat is one among many occupied by young squatters in a very dilapidated building. Chris' heroes aren't Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones - yet he realises he must come to grips with what they represent.

The contrast with Roza could not be more stark. Her life has been a roller-coaster ride of delights and despairs. She's Chris' tour guide to a life he can't even imagine. Is it to his credit that he's not repelled enough to leave, sitting out the episodes of Roza's life with more grief than resentment. Why does he keep returning? Why does she wish him to? She's a mix of "young woman in control" and "victim of men's depravities" by her own admission. What is Chris' role in her life - to allow her to reassert her illusion of control or to demonstrate depravity is not gender specific? De Bernieres, for all he exposes the character's views to the reader, allows them to keep much hidden away.

The finale to this taunting situation is inevitable, almost Hollywood in its predictability. Yet, that aspect doesn't disappoint. Any other conclusion would have been contrived. That this one is not detracts nothing from how the author leads the reader to it. The brevity of this book may suggest that it lacks depth. Nothing could be further from the truth. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]