This is a story of two ordinary lives, that are, of course, extraordinary. Chris is a bored travelling salesman, living with a wife he no longer loves. Roza is Serbian who's found herself living in London. These two meet, and over the course of time, Roza tells Chris her story. Or does she? How much is fact? How much is a product of her imagination? Is she really someone who's slept with her best friend, her father, dropped out of university, lived as a prostitute? We become as fascinated by her as Chris is. This is a story of missed opportunities, of lives turning out differently because of decisions made, or not made, and the ending leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

This is a story about story-telling.

To begin with, I wasn’t sure why owned this book, or if I was liking it. And that feeling didn’t really shift as I was listening to it, not until the end, which I felt was very satisfying and saved how I felt about the whole thing.

This book is basically structured around the visits that bland, middle-aged travelling salesman Christian makes to a woman, Roza, in the dilapidated shared house she lives in. He meets Roza one night in the 1970’s as he’s trying to pick up his first ever prostitute. She is not a prostitute (though unbeknownst to Christian she was pretending to be one to alleviate a night of boredom). To apologise for his blunder, he offers her a lift home. This is the spark of an odd relationship where he visits her frequently, and she tells him her life story. An illegal immigrant from what was Yugoslavia, Roza’s stories are provoking, sad and often questionable in terms of their truth component. But Chris laps them up, in an emotional affair he justifies by snivelling about his wife.

This is described as a love story, but I’d give strong side-eye to anyone who thinks this is romantic. Both are using the other for their own reasons, and the conclusion of the story is very telling about Christian’s core values. Roza is a fascinating character and I really enjoyed the majority of her story (save for the inclusion of incest – trigger warning for that). Christian, however, is a whiney, self-involved drip of a man, who has fooled himself into thinking he’s compassionate and sensitive about this woman. If he had drove away in his shit-brown Allegra in the first few pages and left us alone with Roza, oh what a book that would have been. But although the world doesn’t need the perspective of men like Christian, it does need for them to have a mirror held up to themselves, and I think this book does that. Perhaps too subtly for my taste – so subtle, in fact, that I do wonder if that was the author’s intention at all – but enough to make me glad that I hadn’t wasted my time in reading.

Well written, rambling, eventually pointless.

Didn't engage me much as the story didn't seem to go anywhere. Didn't particularly like the way it was written in that it was a series of memories becoming more and more extreme. I did laugh out loud at some of the phrases: BDU (Bob Dylan Upstairs), shit brown Allegro, Great White Loaf etc. Crap this and Shit that reminded me of A History of Tractors in Ukraine which I thoroughly enjoyed. It had an abrupt ending that again I didn't enjoy. I think Louis de Bernieres is a one trick pony. Captain Corelli was such a good read but any others I've read of his don't do it for me.
Read for book group and without exception we all thought Roza had invented the majority of her stories. Seems we are the only ones to think so!

I have read many books by Louis de Bernieres and his skill in writing cannot be denied. However, for me, this one really fails to hit the mark. It is difficult to define - a romance or maybe an infatuation between Chris and Roza - who may be Roza but may also be any one of a few handfuls of aliases. The book unfolds as Roza's memoirs almost, inflated to be greater than perhaps they were. I had no feeling for either of the main characters and the storyline was thin and went nowhere.

I did enjoy this, but it was a bit of a slog, and by no means his best work I think.

If you love or even like Louis de Bernieres, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! It is painful that someone who could write such great things could write something so awful. I thought it must have some redeeming features, but it did not.

Read this a while ago - Louis is coming to Keswick for the Words by the Water festival in March and if this was a good read I might have gone to see him. I will be staying at home.

Not that the book was that bad. Just not very meaty. 'I thought you loved me'. Did he? No.

I enjoyed the Yugoslavian elements of the book because I went to Croatia last October.