I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Renting is a nightmare... A novel about the horrors of renting, presenting a wonderfully clear-eyed portrait of loneliness, loss , and what it means to feel at home. Renting is a nightmare. ine should be feeling happy with her life. She's just moved in with Elliot. Their new flat is in an affluent neighbourhood, surrounded by bakeries, yoga studios and organic vegetable shops. They even have a garden. And yet, from the moment they move in, ine can't shake the sense that there's something not quite right about the place... It's not just the humourless estate agent and nameless landlord- it's the chill that seeps through the draughty windows; the damp spreading from the cellar door; the way the organic fruit and veg never lasts as long as it should. And most of all, it's the upstairs neighbours, whose very existence makes peaceful coexistence very difficult indeed. The longer ine spends inside the flat - pretending to work from home; dissecting messages from the friends whose lives seem to have moved on without her - the less it feels like home. And as ine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott...

Reviews

A very funny and original take on the vagaries and indignities of endless renting ... Rife with sharply observed but subtle insights on class and money * Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City *
A deeply compelling and melancholic modern ghost story, which draws upon the tropes of gothic to examine with piercing precision and wry humour the insidiousness, malignancy, and all-encompassing bleakness of the housing market. This novel is sharp and sad and incisive * Susannah Dickey, author of Common Decency *
A smart, funny and, occasionally, terrifying story of love, rental and millennial angst. With rare skill and eerie precision, Lanigan captures the small joys and mundane horrors of the current moment. Beautifully written, frequently hilarious, and maddeningly real. * Seamas O'Reilly, author of Did Ye Hear Mammy Died *
Risn Lanigan has been threatening to be the next great Irish writer for ages, so I'm glad she's finally sat down and done it * Joel Golby *
So unsettling and atmospheric and just devastatingly sad ... An intensely strange and claustrophobic novel, in which a young couples attempts to establish a home together give way to unsettling surreal episodes and disturbing lapses in the protagonists memory. Risn Lanigan masterfully draws on ghost story tropes to suggest the nightmare of being trapped in financial insecurity and a bad relationship. What I really loved about this novel, though, was its resistance to a single interpretation; it had a powerful ambiguity that lingered in my mind long after Id finished reading. * Imogen Crimp, author of A Very Nice Girl *
A gothic novel for generation rent - an uncanny, hilarious story about a young woman haunted by her flat * Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain *
So, so good ... It is this balance between the classic and the modern that Lanigan gets so right ... An unnerving, beautifully teased-out novel that gives as much as it takes * Jess White, Lunchpoems *

Author Bio

R isin Lanigan is an editor and writer based in London and Belfast. Her work has appeared in i-D, VICE, The Atlantic, New Statesman, The Fence and Prospect, amongst other publications. She was longlisted for the Curtis Brown First Novel Prize in 2019, and won the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2020. I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There is her first novel.