Louis De Bernieres – A Partisan's Daughter

Review by showhost
So where does it start, well its London in the 70’s. Chris, a salesman, is having a midlife crisis, and his wife ‘the great white loaf’ has turned to knitting instead of sex.
After a friend of his had told him about the wonderful time he had with a ‘lady of ill repute’, Chris decides to try, against his better judgement, to pick up one of these ladies, so he goes cruising along the back streets of London and when he sees Roza standing on the corner he assumes she is waiting for clients.
Roza is a Serb whose father was one of Tito's Partisans and she is in self imposed exile from Tito's Yugoslavia. Roza is a retired prostitute but finds him charming and after admonishing him for assuming she was looking for work, she accepts his lift home by way of an apology. Roza is in her 20's and lives in a room in a big house with other lodgers. They are all alias’s, people who (on the rent book) have fictitious names as most of them have something to hide like 'Bob Dylan Upstairs'.

Over coffee and cigarettes, Roza starts to tell Chris her life story but only a little at a time, so Chris has to come back to her house for more installments.
This goes on for weeks. Chris just loves to sit and listen and admire her body
while she speaks, hoping that one day he may have sex with her when he has saved the £500 that she said she would cost if she were still for hire.
Roza realizes that she looks forward more and more to Chris’s visits so draws out the stories she has to tell. Are these stories true or false we don’t know.
All through the book the narrative jumps from Roza to Chris and past to present.
It’s sort of like a modern day 1001 Nights.

I think I missed some of the subtle quiet humour/observations as I was just reading and not taking it in. Instances:
Talking about the Linnet bird:"when it flew about the house it dropped guano on everything indiscriminately, which is what all birds do as far as I know. It must be nice to be shamelessly incontinent without having to suffer the consequences".
" The runaway horse was called Russia because it was very big, a complete liability and always going where it wasn't wanted".

It's a strange book, which I didn’t get at first and I had to drag myself back to it. However by page 150 I wanted to get back to Roza’s story to see what happens next (but bear in mind that this wasn't until the last third of the book as the book is only 212 pages long…)

It won’t be in my top 10 favourite reads of the year