LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
A fascinating, thoughtful, and insightful look into the very personal viewpoint of the author’s childhood growing up in an experimental community in the 1970’s and 80’s, and then her further search for the meaning of home. Susanna Crossman is much admired by the LoveReading team, she was the Judge’s Winner for our LoveReading Very Short Story Competition in 2019, with Oh, I Do Love a Banana. We loved how much she was able to invest in such a short story, it made me so emotional, and even now I remember Stanley with fondness. She now lives in France and works as a writer, clinical arts therapist, and lecturer. In Home is Where We Start, her emotional eloquence and intelligence is felt from the start. Susanna spent 15 years, from the age of six in the late 1970’s, in a shared mansion full of people attempting to bring their utopian dream to life. While visiting her childhood she is honest, yet kind and compassionate, both to herself and the others in the community. She visits emotional and dark times, she looks back and forwards, she examines and analyses using the skills she has learned. This is an absolutely fascinating book, not only because she allows us to visit the social experiment, but for how very honest the author is, and how considerate and reflective she is. A LoveReading Star Book, Home is Where We Start is such a rewarding and generous read, highly recommended.
Liz Robinson
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Home Is Where We Start Synopsis
A Guardian book to look out for for 2024
'A bold and intimate grappling with the hidden history at the heart of a childhood that was set up as a collectivist social experiment' EWAN MORRISON, author of How to Survive Everything
'Strikingly good' NOREEN MASUD, author of A Flat Place
In the turbulent late seventies, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside. They would share their new home with over fifty other residents from all over the world, armed with worn paperbacks on ecology, Marx and radical feminism, drawn together by utopian dreams of remaking the world. They did not leave for fifteen years.
While the Adults adopted new names and liberated themselves from domestic roles, the Kids ran free. In the community, nobody was too young to discuss nuclear war and children learned not to expect wiped noses or regular bedtimes. Instead, they made a home in a house with no locks or keys, never knowing when they opened doors whether they'd find violent political debates or couples writhing under sheets.
Decades later, and armed with hindsight, Crossman revisits her past, turning to leading thinkers in philosophy, sociology and anthropology to examine the society she grew up in, and the many meanings of family and home. In this luminous memoir, she asks what happens to children who are raised as the product of social experiments and explores how growing up estranged from the outside world shapes her as a parent today.
'Crossman writes with such curiosity and heart-breaking honesty of what it is to find her own truth. I was enthralled by this book' LILY DUNN, author of Sins of my Father
'Beautiful, bold, tender. I loved this gorgeous memoir about making home' PRAGYA AGARWAL, author of Hysterical
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780241650905 |
| Publication date: |
15th August 2024 |
| Author: |
Susanna Crossman |
| Publisher: |
Fig Tree an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
320 pages |
Author
About Susanna Crossman
Susanna was born in Britain but am now based in France where she lives with her partner and three daughters.
Susanna writes fiction and non-fiction, in both English and French, and has recently had work in ZenoPress, The Creative Review, 3:AM Journal, The Arsonista, Litro and elsewhere. Her essay, The Nomenclature of a Toddler, inspired by her youngest daughter’s use of language, was nominated for Best of The Net (2018). As a writer, Susanna also regularly collaborate in arts projects, currently the English-Spanish prose film, 360° of Morning – three artists in three mornings in three different countries. When she am not writing, Susanna works internationally as a clinical arts therapist and lecturer, specialising in mental health, creativity and non-verbal communication.
More About Susanna Crossman
