Where to start with Rose Tremain

British novelist, born 1943. Won the Costa Novel Award in 1999 and the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2008.

Best Rose Tremain book to start with: The Road Home (2007), on 2 of the 16 lists it could have made.

The Road Home is a good first Tremain. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Costa in 2007. A man from eastern Europe comes to London to find work and send money home, and the book follows him with humour and tenderness. It is readable and shapely, and a good guide to what she does well.

If you prefer history, Restoration was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989. It is set at the court of Charles II, and Merivel: A Man of His Time, shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize in 2013, is its sequel, so read Restoration first. Music and Silence won the Costa Novel Award in 1999 and is set in the Danish court in the 17th century. The Gustav Sonata, shortlisted for the Costa in 2016 and the Walter Scott Prize in 2017, follows two boys’ friendship across decades in Switzerland. The Colour, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2004, is set in the New Zealand gold rush.

Readers like Trespass and Lily, and Absolutely and Forever was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize in 2024. Read them once you have the measure of her.