Partisan's Daughter (de Bernieres)

A Partisan's Daughter
Louis de Bernieres, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307389145

Summary
From the acclaimed author of Corelli’s Mandolin and Birds Without Wings comes an intimate new novel, a love story at once raw and sweetly funny, wry and heartbreakingly sad.

He’s Chris: bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. In his forties, he’s a stranger inside the youth culture of London in the late 1970s, a stranger to himself on the night he invites a hooker into his car.

She’s Roza: Yugoslavian, recently moved to London, the daughter of one of Tito’s partisans. She’s in her twenties but has already lived a life filled with danger, misadventure, romance, and tragedy. And although she’s not a hooker, when she’s propositioned by Chris, she gets into his car anyway.

Over the next months Roza tells Chris the stories of her past. She’s a fast-talking, wily Scheherazade, saving her own life by telling it to Chris. And he takes in her tales as if they were oxygen in an otherwise airless world. But is Roza telling the truth? Does Chris hear the stories through the filter of his own need? Does it even matter?

This deeply moving novel of their unlikely love—narrated both in the moment and in recollection, each of their voices deftly realized—is also a brilliantly subtle commentary on storytelling: its seductions and powers, and its ultimately unavoidable dangers. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—December 8, 1954
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Bradfield College; Victoria University of
   Manchester; University of London
• Awards—Commonwealth Writers Prize (1991, '92, '95)
• Currently—Norfolk, East Anglia, England

Louis de Bernieres is a British novelist most famous for his fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. In 1993 de Bernières was selected as one of the "20 Best of Young British Novelists", part of a promotion in Granta magazine. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. It was also shortlisted for the 1994 Sunday Express Book of the Year. It has been translated into over 11 languages and is an international bestseller.

In 2008 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in the Arts by the De Montfort University in Leicester, which he had previously attended when it was known as Leicester Polytechnic.

De Bernières-Smart was born near Woolwich and grew up in Surrey, the first part of his surname being inherited from a French Huguenot forefather. He was educated at Bradfield College and joined the army when he was 18, but left after four months of service at Sandhurst. He attended the Victoria University of Manchester and the Institute of Education, University of London.

Before he began to write full-time he held a wide variety of jobs, including being a mechanic, a motorcycle messenger and an English teacher in Colombia. He now lives near Bungay in Suffolk with his partner, Cathy and two children, Robin and Sophie. De Bernières is an avid musician. He plays the flute, mandolin, clarinet and guitar, though considers himself an “enthusiastic but badly-educated and erratic” amateur. His literary work often references music and composers he admires, such as the guitar works of Villa-Lobos and Antonio Lauro in the Latin American trilogy, and the mandolin works of Vivaldi and Hummel in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

Books
Latin American trilogy
It was his experiences in Colombia (as well as the influence of writer Gabriel García Márquez, describing himself as a "Marquez parasite") that, he says, profoundly influenced his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992).

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
De Bernieres' most famous book is his fourth, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which the eponymous hero is an Italian soldier who is part of the occupying force on a Greek island during the Second World War. In the US it was originally published as Corelli's Mandolin.

In 2001, the book was turned into a film. De Bernieres strongly disapproved of the film version, commenting, "It would be impossible for a parent to be happy about its baby's ears being put on backwards." He does however state that it has redeeming qualities, and particularly likes the soundtrack.

Since the release of the book and the movie, Cephalonia (the island on which the book is set) has become a major tourist destination; and as a result the tourist industry on the island has begun to capitalise on the book's name. Of this, de Bernieres said: "I was very displeased to see that a bar in Agia Efimia has abandoned its perfectly good Greek name and renamed itself Captain Corelli's, and I dread the idea that sooner or later there might be Captain Corelli Tours, or Pelagia Apartments."

Red Dog
His book Red Dog (2001) was inspired by a statue of a dog he saw during a visit to the Pilbara region of Western Australia and has been filmed in 2011.

Birds Without Wings
Set in Turkey this 2004 novel portrays the people in a small village toward the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Kemal Atatürk, and the outbreak of the First World War.

A Partisan's Daughter
His 7th novel, published in 2008 tells of the relationship between a young Yugoslavian woman and a middle-aged British man in the 1970s, set in London.

Notwithstanding
Published in 2009, Notwithstanding is a collection of short stories revolving around a fictional English village, Notwithstanding, and its eccentric inhabitants. Many of the stories were published separately earlier in de Bernieres's career and are based on the village where he grew up, Wormley, Surrey, and he muses whether this is, or is no longer, the rural idyll. The author reflects in the Afterword:

I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations...We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough...Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree.

(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
In A Partisan's Daughter, his urgent, spare new novel of romantic obsession, Louis de Bernieres, proficient at intricate historical narratives (Corelli's Mandolin, Birds Without Wings) shows himself an artist of the simpler story as well. Not that simple means easy. If prostitution, as so often is said, is the oldest profession, then writing about fallen women must be the oldest literary subject. To make that subject hit its mark requires a new spin.
Liesl Schillinger - New York Times

A wise and moving novel, perfectly accomplished. It shines fresh light on the nature of love.... Like Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, A Partisan’s Daughter is a novel about missed opportunities and wrong paths taken, tracing the way in which one false move can alter the history of a life.... A glory.
Guardian (UK)

De Bernieres (Corelli's Mandolin) delivers an oddball love story of two spiritually displaced would-be lovers. During a dreary late 1970s London winter, stolid and discontented Chris is drawn to seedy and mysterious Roza, a Yugoslav emigree he initially believes is a prostitute. She isn't (though she claims to have been), and soon the two embark on an awkward friendship (Chris would like to imagine it as a romance) in which Roza spins her life's stories for her nondescript, erstwhile suitor. Roza, whose father supported Tito, moved to London for opportunity but instead found a school of hard knocks, and she's all too happy to dole out the lessons she learned to the slavering Chris. The questions of whether Roza will fall for Chris and whether Chris will leave his wife (he calls her "the Great White Loaf") carry the reader along, as the reliability of Chris and Roza, who trade off narration duties, is called into question-sometimes to less than ideal effect. The conclusion is crushing, and Chris's scorching regret burns brightly to the last line.
Publishers Weekly

De Bernières, whose sweeping epics took us to Turkey in Birds Without Wings and to Greece in Corelli's Mandolin, turns closer to home with a melancholy tale of midlife crisis set in 1970s London with occasional glimpses of Yugoslavia. Chris is a 40-year-old unhappily married salesman who mistakes Roza for a streetwalker and in his loneliness makes a fumbling attempt to hire her. Instead, he gives her a lift home, and she invites him to return to her ramshackle flat for coffee. He does repeatedly as Roza slowly relates her intricate and allegedly sordid life story as the daughter of a fervent Tito loyalist. A complex and codependent relationship develops as Chris is alternately appalled and thrilled by Roza's blunt, manipulative storytelling and Roza imagines a future as Chris's lover. Overall, this is a sad, quiet novel about missed opportunities owing to lack of honest communication. Although more introspective than de Bernières's other works, this latest novel is no less skillful. For all literary fiction collections.
Christine Perkins - Library Journal

The popular British author who seems to alternate ambitious blockbusters (Birds Without Wings, 2005, etc.) with wispy makeweight fictions (e.g., the wafer-thin Red Dog) tests his devoted readership's patience again. This time we're treated to a dual narrative shared by Chris, a middle-age English widower ostensibly mourning the death of his sexually unresponsive wife ("a Great White Loaf"), and the exotic girl, Roza, whom he impulsively picks up, mistaking her for a prostitute. Chris is Alan Bates, timidly hoping Anthony Quinn's ebullient Zorba the Greek will teach him to shed propriety and learn to dance (so to speak). Roza, who perhaps actually is the Bulgarian Serb that she intermittently claims to be, is a gifted liar, and the sexually stunning life force of Chris's wildest dreams. They continue to meet, usually in the dilapidated apartment building Roza shares with several countercultural types (e.g., their very own BDU: Bob Dylan Upstairs). Roza regales the lovestruck Chris with fiery tales of her (mostly erotic) experiences, including an incestuous romp with her father, a devout follower of strongman Marshall Tito. Many of this painstakingly attenuated book's brief chapters are vehicles for canned information about the sufferings of Eastern European minority populations during times of political interest, and hence of inevitable interest. But everything eventually comes back to Roza's grandiose self-dramatizations, and it becomes impossible to take it, or her, seriously when we're frequently subjected to brain-dead, space-filling chapter titles ("Can You Fall in Love if You've Been Castrated?") and the kind of sonorous sentimentality that belongs in a zero-budget film noir (e.g.,"Even inside every damn fucked-up woman there's some sweet little girl"). A malodorous turkey. Corelli's Mandolin it ain't.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. What are the major themes of this novel? How does the idea of storytelling play into them?

2. How much did you know about Britain's "Winter of Discontent" (1978-79) before reading A Partisan's Daughter? Why do you think de Bernières chose this period for his setting?

3. We readers see Chris's wife (The Great White Loaf) only through his eyes. How do you imagine she would describe
him?

4. Did you believe all of Roza's stories? Which, if any, strained your willingness to believe? Which one do you think is the centerpiece of the novel?

5. Discuss the notion of trust as it figures into the novel. Which characters are trustworthy? Do you trust either narrator?

6. What is the significance of the library scene? How did it change your understanding of Roza's actions?

7. Chris believes he's in love with Roza but acknowledges that his obsession is mostly sexual. Does Roza love Chris? Whose motives are clearer?

8. How does the narration, with its shifting time frames, contribute to your reading experience? Why do you think the author chose to allow both Chris and Roza to speak in Chapter Sixteen but kept their voices separate everywhere else?

9. In what ways are the novel's two father-daughter relationships similar, and how are they different? Which relationship seems stronger: the one between Roza and her father, or the one between Chris and his daughter?

10. Compare Alex, Francis, and Chris. How are their relationships with Roza similar, and how are they different? What does Roza expect or demand from each?

11. Along the same lines, compare Roza's relationship with Tasha with her relationship with Fatima. How do these two friendships shape Roza's personality?

12. On page 137, Chris finally tells a story of his own, about his uncle. What purpose does it serve? How does Roza's response show us how she feels about Chris?

13. What role does the Bob Dylan Upstairs play in the novel?

14. Why do you think Roza gave Chris and the Bob Dylan Upstairs different endings to the Big Bastard story? Which do you believe?

15. Discuss the last chapter of the novel. What were you expecting? What was most surprising to you? Were you satisfied with the ending?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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