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I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There
Renting is a nightmare...
Áine 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, Áine 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 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 Áine 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 Áine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott...
Brilliantly observed and darkly funny, I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a ghost story set in the rental crisis. A wonderfully clear-eyed portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging, it examines what it means to feel at home.
Áine 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, Áine 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 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 Áine 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 Áine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott...
Brilliantly observed and darkly funny, I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a ghost story set in the rental crisis. A wonderfully clear-eyed portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging, it examines what it means to feel at home.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 20, 2025
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5767 people want to read
About the author
Róisín Lanigan
2 books19 followersRóisín Lanigan is an editor and writer based in London and Belfast. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian and The Fence, 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews
March 26, 2025
Editor and journalist Róisín Lanigan’s debut novel is a compelling take on the plight of generation rent – the 18- to 40-year-olds essentially priced out of the housing market. Lanigan draws extensively on tropes from ghost stories and haunted house narratives to craft this unsettling, fluid tale. The focus is on Áine, now in her early thirties she left home in Belfast for university, eventually ending up living and working in London. But, her easy-going existence with best friend-turned-flatmate Laura is upended when Laura suddenly announces she’s leaving to buy somewhere with her boyfriend. Áine begins to understand that everyone around her is following a set of unspoken rules: getting engaged, getting married and/or starting to produce children. So Áine reluctantly attempts to shape her own life in line with this sudden shift. She moves into a rented, garden flat with boyfriend Elliott. The area – based on East Dulwich but could just as well be Crouch End or Stoke Newington – has all the markers of ‘boujie’ London society, an upmarket bakery not unlike Gail’s has just opened, there’s a 24-hour organic supermarket, and Áine’s surrounded by women sporting eco-conscious Vejas and Lululemon, often accessorised with an expensive pushchair. All of which makes the relatively low rent for the flat seem slightly suspicious.
Áine finds this new space claustrophobic and increasingly unnerving, a strange mould covers the walls, resisting all attempts to remove it or check its growth. The upstairs’ neighbours are distant and oddly menacing. And Áine gradually realises the flat’s haunted, riddled with traces of the people who came before. The dust from their skin cells clogs her nose and mouth, making it hard to breath, this and the mould start to make her ill. Áine tries to eat healthily but food mysteriously rots as soon as it’s purchased, flies gathering around the kitchen table. Áine can’t shake the sense that she’s under constant surveillance and her sleep’s disrupted by hallucinatory nightmares. Yet Elliott remains oblivious, blaming Áine’s problems on her anxiety, hinting she may even be delusionary and unhinged. The problems in their relationship are exacerbated by their clashing cultural heritage, Elliott is resolutely rational, even though lapsed Áine grew up Catholic in a family steeped in spiritual beliefs from spectres to banshees.
Lanigan painstakingly documents Áine’s deteriorating physical and mental state, her increasing isolation and alienation. Without being overly derivative, Lanigan’s deft storytelling’s directly inspired by work like The Yellow Wallpaper and Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger, like these she creates a sense of a world pervaded by uncanny, malevolent forces. And, like her influences, Lanigan exploits the eerie to tease out issues around gender, capitalism and class – the concrete, malevolent forces impinging on Áine’s sense of self. The latter underlined by the glaring differences between working-class Áine’s and monied Laura’s experiences of London, all of which forms a timely commentary on the significance of inheritance, the ways in which it’s creating fresh, gaping economic divides. Something which also pushes mismatched couples like Áine and Elliott together, the only way it’s possible to afford somewhere even half-way decent in cities like London. Circumstances which also make it near impossible to leave, so that Áine has to decide which is more threatening to her well-being: the supernatural or the likely loss of rental deposit, and grappling with rapidly rising rents, dilapidated housing stock, and indifferent landlords. Although, like the governess in The Turn of the Screw, it’s never clear if Áine’s dealing with the demonic or manifesting her own conflicts and trauma, she’s not an entirely reliable narrator. All of which adds to the novel’s considerable force. Admittedly there were some slow burn stretches but overall I thought this was accomplished, moving and subtly disturbing.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Fig Tree for an ARC
Áine finds this new space claustrophobic and increasingly unnerving, a strange mould covers the walls, resisting all attempts to remove it or check its growth. The upstairs’ neighbours are distant and oddly menacing. And Áine gradually realises the flat’s haunted, riddled with traces of the people who came before. The dust from their skin cells clogs her nose and mouth, making it hard to breath, this and the mould start to make her ill. Áine tries to eat healthily but food mysteriously rots as soon as it’s purchased, flies gathering around the kitchen table. Áine can’t shake the sense that she’s under constant surveillance and her sleep’s disrupted by hallucinatory nightmares. Yet Elliott remains oblivious, blaming Áine’s problems on her anxiety, hinting she may even be delusionary and unhinged. The problems in their relationship are exacerbated by their clashing cultural heritage, Elliott is resolutely rational, even though lapsed Áine grew up Catholic in a family steeped in spiritual beliefs from spectres to banshees.
Lanigan painstakingly documents Áine’s deteriorating physical and mental state, her increasing isolation and alienation. Without being overly derivative, Lanigan’s deft storytelling’s directly inspired by work like The Yellow Wallpaper and Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger, like these she creates a sense of a world pervaded by uncanny, malevolent forces. And, like her influences, Lanigan exploits the eerie to tease out issues around gender, capitalism and class – the concrete, malevolent forces impinging on Áine’s sense of self. The latter underlined by the glaring differences between working-class Áine’s and monied Laura’s experiences of London, all of which forms a timely commentary on the significance of inheritance, the ways in which it’s creating fresh, gaping economic divides. Something which also pushes mismatched couples like Áine and Elliott together, the only way it’s possible to afford somewhere even half-way decent in cities like London. Circumstances which also make it near impossible to leave, so that Áine has to decide which is more threatening to her well-being: the supernatural or the likely loss of rental deposit, and grappling with rapidly rising rents, dilapidated housing stock, and indifferent landlords. Although, like the governess in The Turn of the Screw, it’s never clear if Áine’s dealing with the demonic or manifesting her own conflicts and trauma, she’s not an entirely reliable narrator. All of which adds to the novel’s considerable force. Admittedly there were some slow burn stretches but overall I thought this was accomplished, moving and subtly disturbing.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Fig Tree for an ARC
March 23, 2025
I’ve had to think long and hard to decide what I want to say about this book. Not because I didn’t like it (I liked it a lot), but because it’s a dense and circuitous story that’s difficult to pin down – something that’s unlikely to be clear from a summary of the plot. In fact, if I sum up I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There, it might sound pretty straightforward. Áine is a twentysomething Irish woman in London who’s just moved in with her boyfriend Elliott. While the move was born out of necessity, they seem to have hit the jackpot with their new flat: it’s affordable, quiet, in a ‘good’ area, and even has a garden. Áine, however, struggles to feel at home there, growing increasingly uneasy: about the persistent mould, the creepy upstairs neighbour, and, more broadly, the discomfort of inhabiting a space that isn’t truly hers.
The book grabbed my attention partly because of its perfect one-line pitch: ‘a ghost story set in the rental crisis’. I commend whoever managed to come up with that, because – like another recent read, Chris Kohler’s Phantom Limb – it’s actually very hard to categorise. If this novel is any kind of ghost story, it’s an existential one.
Put another way: Áine and Elliott finding an affordable flat in a leafy London suburb is such a fantasy that it can only be, underneath that, a horror story. It’s the inherent uncanniness of living in places that don’t belong to you: the destabilising effect of frequent moves, rising prices, poor conditions, all the limitations those things place on the rest of your life. It’s also the story of the disintegration of a relationship in which nothing is really wrong, and yet, everything is. You could even argue it’s a story about depression. The atmosphere is suffocatingly mundane, filled with long, inert stretches of life that feel just slightly off, a quality it shares with books like The Trick is to Keep Breathing (with its sense of numbness) and Nightshift (for the London alienation).
Formally, though, I found it closest to a bunch of books I’ve read that were originally published in the 90s or 2000s, like Helen Smith’s Alison Wonderland , Matt Thorne’s Tourist and Cherry , and Scarlett Thomas’s Lily Pascale novels. These are all books that were positioned as being ‘about’ something (usually some sort of mystery) but are really a lot baggier than that. They’re filled with highly detailed writing about quotidian things, an approach that immerses us in the world of the character, so we’re taken along with them whatever happens, whether banal or fantastical. Too readable to be ‘literary’, too character-led to be ‘genre’, too plotless to be ‘commercial’, they don’t fit into any modern marketing category.
This is a class of novel that I didn’t think existed any more; it’s a genuinely pleasant surprise to encounter one in the wild. At the same time, because I Want to Go Home... takes this freewheeling, discursive approach, I’ve found it very difficult to articulate why I liked it. It can be a little too baggy: there are some episodes (the dog??) that could have been cut in their entirety without making any difference to the story overall. Then again, if Áine sometimes feels too passive, too stuck in her own inertia – that’s kind of the point. And if I’ve rambled on too much about all this in my review... well, that very much suits the book.
I received an advance review copy of I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There from the publisher through NetGalley.
The book grabbed my attention partly because of its perfect one-line pitch: ‘a ghost story set in the rental crisis’. I commend whoever managed to come up with that, because – like another recent read, Chris Kohler’s Phantom Limb – it’s actually very hard to categorise. If this novel is any kind of ghost story, it’s an existential one.
Put another way: Áine and Elliott finding an affordable flat in a leafy London suburb is such a fantasy that it can only be, underneath that, a horror story. It’s the inherent uncanniness of living in places that don’t belong to you: the destabilising effect of frequent moves, rising prices, poor conditions, all the limitations those things place on the rest of your life. It’s also the story of the disintegration of a relationship in which nothing is really wrong, and yet, everything is. You could even argue it’s a story about depression. The atmosphere is suffocatingly mundane, filled with long, inert stretches of life that feel just slightly off, a quality it shares with books like The Trick is to Keep Breathing (with its sense of numbness) and Nightshift (for the London alienation).
Formally, though, I found it closest to a bunch of books I’ve read that were originally published in the 90s or 2000s, like Helen Smith’s Alison Wonderland , Matt Thorne’s Tourist and Cherry , and Scarlett Thomas’s Lily Pascale novels. These are all books that were positioned as being ‘about’ something (usually some sort of mystery) but are really a lot baggier than that. They’re filled with highly detailed writing about quotidian things, an approach that immerses us in the world of the character, so we’re taken along with them whatever happens, whether banal or fantastical. Too readable to be ‘literary’, too character-led to be ‘genre’, too plotless to be ‘commercial’, they don’t fit into any modern marketing category.
This is a class of novel that I didn’t think existed any more; it’s a genuinely pleasant surprise to encounter one in the wild. At the same time, because I Want to Go Home... takes this freewheeling, discursive approach, I’ve found it very difficult to articulate why I liked it. It can be a little too baggy: there are some episodes (the dog??) that could have been cut in their entirety without making any difference to the story overall. Then again, if Áine sometimes feels too passive, too stuck in her own inertia – that’s kind of the point. And if I’ve rambled on too much about all this in my review... well, that very much suits the book.
I received an advance review copy of I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There from the publisher through NetGalley.
April 20, 2025
Reading this novel felt a bit like watching a patch of mould grow on a wall. It’s dark, depressing and slow moving. I thought this was going to be a real critique of the renting housing crisis and while that’s there, it’s not really there enough for me. And neither is the horror because, well, it’s not scary. Overall I just wanted more from this.
May 18, 2025
same.
March 3, 2025
thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review! <3
’Loving her was like loving a haunted house’
I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There, is a depressingly brilliant, thought-provoking look at self-worth, love and loneliness in England’s housing crisis.
We follow a young-couple, Elliott and Áine, as they move into their new flat. Things take a turn for the worse, however, as Áine increasingly suspects the flat as being haunted, and Elliott does not. We watch them navigate work, their relationship and their social lives, all as the flat continues to grow an all-encompassing mould.
I knew the moment I picked up I Want To Go Home…. that I would love it. As a young person myself (about to finish uni, in my early 20’s) I found myself relating wholly to the couples experience in finding a house. The housing crisis in England is a truly horrifying thing for young people, one pock-marked with cruel land-lords, ever rising rents and a feeling that while you may be able to live in a ‘house’ you can never make it your home, you can never own your own little plot of land. Lanigan did a fantastic job at portraying this, with her witty remarks on the almost non-existent estate agent ‘Jack S’ and of course the dominant and almost oppressive nature of the nameless landlord. I love how these figures that dictate so much of our lives had such a menacing presence throughout the book. You don’t need to see your landlord every day to know they have a complete hold over your life, and I think Lanigan perfected this.
The highlight of this story, for me, was Áine. It’s been a long time since I’ve related so much to a book character that it honestly made me feel a little scared! Her imposter-syndrome, utter lack of self-worth and reliance on the idea that she is loved without knowing whether she loves someone back, was so captivating to me, as someone who feels all these emotions daily. The way that her and Elliott’s relationship was portrayed as imperfect was very important to show in a society, and economy, in which meaningful relationships are so hard to develop and grow.
While I Want To Go Home…. had some slower moments for me, it took me a little while to fully immerse myself in the story, this is such a worthwhile read.
Overall, I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There gets 4/5 stars.
’Loving her was like loving a haunted house’
I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There, is a depressingly brilliant, thought-provoking look at self-worth, love and loneliness in England’s housing crisis.
We follow a young-couple, Elliott and Áine, as they move into their new flat. Things take a turn for the worse, however, as Áine increasingly suspects the flat as being haunted, and Elliott does not. We watch them navigate work, their relationship and their social lives, all as the flat continues to grow an all-encompassing mould.
I knew the moment I picked up I Want To Go Home…. that I would love it. As a young person myself (about to finish uni, in my early 20’s) I found myself relating wholly to the couples experience in finding a house. The housing crisis in England is a truly horrifying thing for young people, one pock-marked with cruel land-lords, ever rising rents and a feeling that while you may be able to live in a ‘house’ you can never make it your home, you can never own your own little plot of land. Lanigan did a fantastic job at portraying this, with her witty remarks on the almost non-existent estate agent ‘Jack S’ and of course the dominant and almost oppressive nature of the nameless landlord. I love how these figures that dictate so much of our lives had such a menacing presence throughout the book. You don’t need to see your landlord every day to know they have a complete hold over your life, and I think Lanigan perfected this.
The highlight of this story, for me, was Áine. It’s been a long time since I’ve related so much to a book character that it honestly made me feel a little scared! Her imposter-syndrome, utter lack of self-worth and reliance on the idea that she is loved without knowing whether she loves someone back, was so captivating to me, as someone who feels all these emotions daily. The way that her and Elliott’s relationship was portrayed as imperfect was very important to show in a society, and economy, in which meaningful relationships are so hard to develop and grow.
While I Want To Go Home…. had some slower moments for me, it took me a little while to fully immerse myself in the story, this is such a worthwhile read.
Overall, I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There gets 4/5 stars.
February 14, 2025
3/5 stars
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been too many years since my last confession. These are my sins. I am loved and I don’t think I deserve to be loved. I am a betrayer. I am a bad friend. I am pretending to be someone else. I am tired all the time from the pretence. There are ten commandments and I am steadily making my way through violating all of them. There’s something inside my house and I think it wants to kill me. Does the Church still believe in exorcism? Can you exorcise my house? It’s not really my house anyway. Can you exorcise me?”
An interesting look at a modern day haunted life amidst adolescent anxieties and an increasingly constricting housing crisis. I appreciated a lot of the ideas, but didn’t feel it lived up to its full potential.
We follow young couple Elliot and Áine, having just moved in together into a shared rental flat that, on the surface, looks like the millennial dream. We follow them throughout the duration of their yearlong lease, as the cracks begin to appear in both the walls of their seemingly perfect dwelling, as well as their relationship.
This was one of my most anticipated literary releases of the year. The potential for a haunted-house novel examining millennial existential fears, set during a post-pandemic rental-crisis was endless. I was excited to see where the author would take it. Above all, I wanted the novel to capture that titular homesick feeling of wanting to return to a “feeling of home” regardless of location. A state that might not even exist anymore, or maybe never has. In its best moments, it did that, but there was a lot of (for lack of a better word) “empty space” in between those.
Empty space occupies a lot of the pages of this novel. There’s the emptiness that Áine feels about her life, her job and her daily routines. The increasingly empty silence between her and her boyfriend, and the empty conversations with her friends. The emptiness of a house that refuses to become a home, because it’s so clearly impermanent and “not yours”. It asks the question of our current crisis is a “housing”-one, a “homing-crisis”, or both. I loved these conversations about a situation I have lived, and continue to see many of my generation-fellows still live.
Personally, I’d wished there’d been a little more to fill the empty spaces though. As it stands, I Want to Go Home but I’m Already There has distinctly little plot, resulting in a dragging and often boring reading-experience. Although that thematically matches well, I feel like a bit of contrast with some more dark comedy or even more genuine horror from the “hauntings” would’ve elevated it even more.
Many thanks to Penguin and Fig Tree for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been too many years since my last confession. These are my sins. I am loved and I don’t think I deserve to be loved. I am a betrayer. I am a bad friend. I am pretending to be someone else. I am tired all the time from the pretence. There are ten commandments and I am steadily making my way through violating all of them. There’s something inside my house and I think it wants to kill me. Does the Church still believe in exorcism? Can you exorcise my house? It’s not really my house anyway. Can you exorcise me?”
An interesting look at a modern day haunted life amidst adolescent anxieties and an increasingly constricting housing crisis. I appreciated a lot of the ideas, but didn’t feel it lived up to its full potential.
We follow young couple Elliot and Áine, having just moved in together into a shared rental flat that, on the surface, looks like the millennial dream. We follow them throughout the duration of their yearlong lease, as the cracks begin to appear in both the walls of their seemingly perfect dwelling, as well as their relationship.
This was one of my most anticipated literary releases of the year. The potential for a haunted-house novel examining millennial existential fears, set during a post-pandemic rental-crisis was endless. I was excited to see where the author would take it. Above all, I wanted the novel to capture that titular homesick feeling of wanting to return to a “feeling of home” regardless of location. A state that might not even exist anymore, or maybe never has. In its best moments, it did that, but there was a lot of (for lack of a better word) “empty space” in between those.
Empty space occupies a lot of the pages of this novel. There’s the emptiness that Áine feels about her life, her job and her daily routines. The increasingly empty silence between her and her boyfriend, and the empty conversations with her friends. The emptiness of a house that refuses to become a home, because it’s so clearly impermanent and “not yours”. It asks the question of our current crisis is a “housing”-one, a “homing-crisis”, or both. I loved these conversations about a situation I have lived, and continue to see many of my generation-fellows still live.
Personally, I’d wished there’d been a little more to fill the empty spaces though. As it stands, I Want to Go Home but I’m Already There has distinctly little plot, resulting in a dragging and often boring reading-experience. Although that thematically matches well, I feel like a bit of contrast with some more dark comedy or even more genuine horror from the “hauntings” would’ve elevated it even more.
Many thanks to Penguin and Fig Tree for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
March 22, 2025
Absolute belter
March 25, 2025
A three star review is hardest to write. There were elements of this debut novel that I really enjoyed - the writing mainly, and the ending. The story however, just didn't really do it for me. Even accepting that I'm not the demographic for this genre (sad girl lit), the story itself - part-social commentary on the housing crisis, part-ghost story - was monotonous at times and relentlessly grim.
Aine is in her late 20s and moving with her boyfriend Elliott into a flat in an up-and-coming area on the outskirts of London. The problem is the flat - it's dank, filthy, covered in mould and Aine feels it's haunted. The more time she spends in the flat, the more she becomes consumed with the weird neighbours upstairs, the putrid rubbish accumulating in the hallway and scrubbing away the damp patches that keep appearing from the basement. In addition, Aine misses her best friend and former housemate Laura and isn't taking her pills (presumably antidepressants though this isn't ever specified I don't think). And frustratingly for Aine, Elliott doesn't seem to notice any of it.
A bit more levity and humour might have helped this story tip along a bit more than it did. I was relieved to reach the final chapter and find some light at last. I'm not one for a ghost story so this may appeal to others more than it did to me. The stylish writing does get the thumbs up from me though. 3/5 stars
*Many thanks to Penguin Books Ireland for the #gifted copy. I Want to Go Home but I'm Already There was published last week (20 March) and is widely available.
Aine is in her late 20s and moving with her boyfriend Elliott into a flat in an up-and-coming area on the outskirts of London. The problem is the flat - it's dank, filthy, covered in mould and Aine feels it's haunted. The more time she spends in the flat, the more she becomes consumed with the weird neighbours upstairs, the putrid rubbish accumulating in the hallway and scrubbing away the damp patches that keep appearing from the basement. In addition, Aine misses her best friend and former housemate Laura and isn't taking her pills (presumably antidepressants though this isn't ever specified I don't think). And frustratingly for Aine, Elliott doesn't seem to notice any of it.
A bit more levity and humour might have helped this story tip along a bit more than it did. I was relieved to reach the final chapter and find some light at last. I'm not one for a ghost story so this may appeal to others more than it did to me. The stylish writing does get the thumbs up from me though. 3/5 stars
*Many thanks to Penguin Books Ireland for the #gifted copy. I Want to Go Home but I'm Already There was published last week (20 March) and is widely available.
April 7, 2025
Not quite what I was expecting; the novel has been promoted as a genre take on the housing crisis, a horror story for generation rent; the tagline of the hardback copy I read is "Renting is a nightmare". This is a clever, catchy way to promote a book (it worked getting me to buy it), but it's a bit of a slight of hand. The story does feature the housing crisis as a backdrop, but for me Lanigan is more focused on repurposing tropes of ghost stories and the gothic novel to depict the main characters mental health struggles; the novel isn't particularly scary, but it's grimly effective at evoking the fugue state of depression, anxiety and self-loathing the main character spirals into through the course of the book. The horror elements are probably the weakest and least interesting parts; in my mind the novel suffered in comparison to "Tell Me I'm Worthless", another recent-ish book that used haunted house tropes and younger 20something protagonists to comment on wider political issues (in that case the resurgence of the far right and transphobia in the UK) in a way that was much more engaging (and scary).
July 2, 2025
When I’d heard that this was a haunted house story set during the rent crisis in London, I said yes please sign me up. As a twenty something in America also dealing with the disaster that is renting I could really relate to a lot of the themes Lanagan was exploring. The book really captures the feeling of signing a lease to a new place that you've had the opportunity to walk through for 5 minutes and had to decide on the spot to take it because there were about 10 other people who wanted to live there. Then you move in only to discover after a month that it absolutely *sucks*, but you're stuck there for another 11 months because breaking the lease is far beyond your budget. I believe Lanagan is using the haunted house analog to really capture that experience that so many of us go through.
Aine herself was just an really interesting character. The quintessential unreliable narrator. I still haven’t quite parsed out what role her mental instability was supposed to play in the story. Perhaps she represented the added difficulty of navigating the rental market as a neurodivergent person. I think it also has to do with the lack of agency she has in the choice of where to live, what to work on, who to live with and the anxiety/depression that can result from that. I mean from the start of the novel it’s made very clear that Aine has little agency over her life from Laura randomly decided to leave their original place and thus making Aine move out to Elliott basically deciding every aspect of her life. Throughout the story we get conflicting information from her and from her friends/family on what is actually going on in the house. Not to mention they constantly dismiss her when she expresses issues with the house their renting. I think it represents a sort of Stockholm syndrome that Elliott in particular feels, the idea that of course renting sucks and we’re at the mercy of some faceless landlord so we should just have to put up with the proverbial “ghosts” in the house. Overall I did really like Aine as a character and thought Lanagan did a really good job at using her to represent all our feelings as renters.
All is to say I really enjoyed reading this book. It is not a happy story by any means, the eerie, dank, disquieting atmosphere really pervades the whole novel. There’s so much more I feel like I could say about this book, I barely even covered the flat itself and Aine’s relationship with Elliot. I can already tell that this one is going to stick with me for a long time. Highly recommend for fans of lit fic/horror.
Aine herself was just an really interesting character. The quintessential unreliable narrator. I still haven’t quite parsed out what role her mental instability was supposed to play in the story. Perhaps she represented the added difficulty of navigating the rental market as a neurodivergent person. I think it also has to do with the lack of agency she has in the choice of where to live, what to work on, who to live with and the anxiety/depression that can result from that. I mean from the start of the novel it’s made very clear that Aine has little agency over her life from Laura randomly decided to leave their original place and thus making Aine move out to Elliott basically deciding every aspect of her life. Throughout the story we get conflicting information from her and from her friends/family on what is actually going on in the house. Not to mention they constantly dismiss her when she expresses issues with the house their renting. I think it represents a sort of Stockholm syndrome that Elliott in particular feels, the idea that of course renting sucks and we’re at the mercy of some faceless landlord so we should just have to put up with the proverbial “ghosts” in the house. Overall I did really like Aine as a character and thought Lanagan did a really good job at using her to represent all our feelings as renters.
All is to say I really enjoyed reading this book. It is not a happy story by any means, the eerie, dank, disquieting atmosphere really pervades the whole novel. There’s so much more I feel like I could say about this book, I barely even covered the flat itself and Aine’s relationship with Elliot. I can already tell that this one is going to stick with me for a long time. Highly recommend for fans of lit fic/horror.
June 30, 2025
Its fascinating how the housing crisis is so bad that its now an element of horror/psychological narrative. The themes explored where so interesting, but the prose lacked some depth to make the themes fully compelling.
February 23, 2025
Argh, I wanted to love this, I really did. The premise was excellent and the start was strong, but so much of the story skirted around stuff without delivering the goods. A lot of the writing was nice, but ultimately it just all felt like vibes and aesthetics without any substance. This was sold as a horror novel, and the setup was absolutely there…but it all just fizzled out and left me frustrated. Shame!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.
March 23, 2025
I have been looking forward to the release of this for ages and its one of the few books I ever pre-ordered. I love anything that's a weird take on a haunted house, and the premise of taking that approach to the rental crisis and milennial malaise was brilliant.
To start with the positive, the main character is really well developed and feels very real to me. Her relationships to her friends, the intense competition with Laura to reach being a real adult, performative dinner parties, very subtle arguments over whatsapp - these all really rang true for me and carried the book. The book has a really sour, claustrophobic atmosphere which works really well - as someone whose lived in a lot of really bleak, damp houses, you can really feel the damp through the pages in a good way. The blow out argument with Laura really stands out against that backdrop and it needed more of these moments.
Part of my issue with the book is maybe my expectations were too high. I wanted a book that approached a haunted house in that yes there are underlying themes told through the house, but the interesting part is how you deal with the house and the haunting. In places, she does go into the trapped feeling of the rental market - do I live with strangers I never speak to, in a bedsit for more than half my wage - this is where the real horror was and it's really not brought to the fore enough.
Instead, it is a book about a failing relationship with a boyfriend the main character never liked, and who never comes through as a real person. The fights with him are pointless because the relationship is obviously doomed, in the way the fights with Laura are heart rending in that there is something there to lose (despite, frankly, Laura being a grade A judgy wagon). The house and the haunting are window dressing portrayed as largely the characters mental health issues - the capitalisation of Prescription here really bothered me as it made it super clear we were doing the whole 'or is she just mad' thing.
The book reads like commercial fiction and throughout I just felt like I really wanted more from it. The pacing is really off in places. An interview with the author published recently said the book was written in four months and honestly it shows. It's not that it's not a good book, it just feels like a missed opportunity for what it could have been. All this being said, it's a good debut and I'll certainly read whatever she puts out next.
3.5/5
To start with the positive, the main character is really well developed and feels very real to me. Her relationships to her friends, the intense competition with Laura to reach being a real adult, performative dinner parties, very subtle arguments over whatsapp - these all really rang true for me and carried the book. The book has a really sour, claustrophobic atmosphere which works really well - as someone whose lived in a lot of really bleak, damp houses, you can really feel the damp through the pages in a good way. The blow out argument with Laura really stands out against that backdrop and it needed more of these moments.
Part of my issue with the book is maybe my expectations were too high. I wanted a book that approached a haunted house in that yes there are underlying themes told through the house, but the interesting part is how you deal with the house and the haunting. In places, she does go into the trapped feeling of the rental market - do I live with strangers I never speak to, in a bedsit for more than half my wage - this is where the real horror was and it's really not brought to the fore enough.
Instead, it is a book about a failing relationship with a boyfriend the main character never liked, and who never comes through as a real person. The fights with him are pointless because the relationship is obviously doomed, in the way the fights with Laura are heart rending in that there is something there to lose (despite, frankly, Laura being a grade A judgy wagon). The house and the haunting are window dressing portrayed as largely the characters mental health issues - the capitalisation of Prescription here really bothered me as it made it super clear we were doing the whole 'or is she just mad' thing.
The book reads like commercial fiction and throughout I just felt like I really wanted more from it. The pacing is really off in places. An interview with the author published recently said the book was written in four months and honestly it shows. It's not that it's not a good book, it just feels like a missed opportunity for what it could have been. All this being said, it's a good debut and I'll certainly read whatever she puts out next.
3.5/5
May 17, 2025
Bleak and too slow-moving that it dragged me days to finish the read. The premise was centered on a renting house horror in a subtle societal and psychological lens; bit dull on the writing tone, so verbose that it drained me to follow Áine’s perspective and the conflicts surrounding her mental distress; about the house’s imperfections, of her friendship and detachment crisis with her previous housemate; Laura and due to her obsession with the house’s unsettling condition it has caused a tense relationship with Elliott; her boyfriend and the new housemate now.
The captured modern living anxieties and alienation in the premise were compelling enough. It was more introspective rather than being a traditional horror set in an almost isolated setting with nothing too spooky or ghostly except for that eerie neighbour dude which only appeared on few scenes. Interesting insight on the landlord part of how they can be quite exploitative and unhelpful. Second half was a bit twisty with foreseen dynamic to Áine’s character, not a fan to Elliott and both interactions with Cian and Laura can be too messy at times that it did not enthrall me on the whole exploration concerning their conflicts.
Just an average read all and all. Would still recommend it if you’re into a psycho-horror with gloomy or gothic related genre, perhaps you would appreciate the premise more than I do 🙌🏻
(review copy courtesy of Times Reads)
The captured modern living anxieties and alienation in the premise were compelling enough. It was more introspective rather than being a traditional horror set in an almost isolated setting with nothing too spooky or ghostly except for that eerie neighbour dude which only appeared on few scenes. Interesting insight on the landlord part of how they can be quite exploitative and unhelpful. Second half was a bit twisty with foreseen dynamic to Áine’s character, not a fan to Elliott and both interactions with Cian and Laura can be too messy at times that it did not enthrall me on the whole exploration concerning their conflicts.
Just an average read all and all. Would still recommend it if you’re into a psycho-horror with gloomy or gothic related genre, perhaps you would appreciate the premise more than I do 🙌🏻
(review copy courtesy of Times Reads)
July 19, 2025
Incredibly well-written but so intensely depressing, this haunted-flat take on the messy millennial novel is really about what it's like to live inside a slowly collapsing relationship that you still have something invested in. Literally nothing else happens, and there's no way I'd read this again, but Róisín Lanigan is a writer to watch. Readalikes that lean more towards the haunting/horror: Kate Murray-Browne's The Upstairs Room and Naomi Booth's
Exit Management.
3.5 stars.
March 14, 2025
this was so good and weird and funny i loved it
July 18, 2025
I literally have no idea what I just read or what happened at the end.
February 19, 2025
oh i LOVED this! super atmospheric, creepy, and anxiety-inducing. scarily relatable at points (hello upstairs neighbours from hell 👋🏻) excited to read more work from róisín lanigan! (arc received in exchange for an honest review)
February 23, 2025
Aine lives in London with her BFF; Laura, but they’re growing up and on now and move in with their respective partners. Whilst Laura seems to have it all, a houseboat, plenty of social media content and an engagement, for Aine it’s all going very wrong. The flat she rents with her partner, Elliot; is seemingly cursed, the odd couple upstairs, the unending mould, the flat seeps in misery and she seems to be the only one deeply affected.
I felt this book was a tad too long, Aine’s obsession with the mould and upstairs neighbours wore on me. I wanted Aine to confront Laura about Moon and Cian seemed a bit of a waste of a character. Despite the detail throughout it felt empty, like I hadn’t really read anything.
Thank you to NetGalley and Fig Tree for this ARC.
I felt this book was a tad too long, Aine’s obsession with the mould and upstairs neighbours wore on me. I wanted Aine to confront Laura about Moon and Cian seemed a bit of a waste of a character. Despite the detail throughout it felt empty, like I hadn’t really read anything.
Thank you to NetGalley and Fig Tree for this ARC.
April 22, 2025
This was the only book that got me genuinely excited just from the blurb. I had high hopes going in but unfortunately, it ended up dragging me into a full-on reading slump.
I really tried to finish it. I pushed through as much as I could, but with 40% left, I had to DNF. The spark to read just completely vanished.
The biggest struggle for me was the writing style. The paragraphs were so long and dense that I felt breathless just trying to keep up. It was mentally tiring to reach the end of each thought. Some parts felt a bit too heavy and repetitive, like it was like being stuck inside Áine’s anxious mind with no pause button. I get that it’s intentional, but it did make reading feel more exhausting than immersive at times. On top of that, the prose was often overly wordy. It felt like the author was over-explaining things, as if readers needed everything spelled out for them. It honestly got frustrating after a while.
I love haunted house stories. It’s a concept I usually devour. I’ve enjoyed many books in this genre before. But with this one… I’m just bummed I couldn’t finish it.
I really appreciated the themes the book tried to explore, especially the way it captured that eerie feeling of being trapped, not just in a haunted space, but in a life that doesn’t quite feel like your own. The whole “I want to go home, but I’m already there” vibe? Super relatable.
It’s not a bad book by any means.
I really tried to finish it. I pushed through as much as I could, but with 40% left, I had to DNF. The spark to read just completely vanished.
The biggest struggle for me was the writing style. The paragraphs were so long and dense that I felt breathless just trying to keep up. It was mentally tiring to reach the end of each thought. Some parts felt a bit too heavy and repetitive, like it was like being stuck inside Áine’s anxious mind with no pause button. I get that it’s intentional, but it did make reading feel more exhausting than immersive at times. On top of that, the prose was often overly wordy. It felt like the author was over-explaining things, as if readers needed everything spelled out for them. It honestly got frustrating after a while.
I love haunted house stories. It’s a concept I usually devour. I’ve enjoyed many books in this genre before. But with this one… I’m just bummed I couldn’t finish it.
I really appreciated the themes the book tried to explore, especially the way it captured that eerie feeling of being trapped, not just in a haunted space, but in a life that doesn’t quite feel like your own. The whole “I want to go home, but I’m already there” vibe? Super relatable.
It’s not a bad book by any means.
March 26, 2025
3.75 stars
ARC review
Áine is in a period of new beginnings in her life. She is moving in with her boyfriend, Elliot, for the first time and experiencing a new way of living without her long-term roommate and friend. They find a flat in an upmarket neighbourhood, and despite Áine's spoken and unspoken reservations, they're moving in before they know it. Áine is immediately unsettled, by the unwelcoming upstairs neighbours, the unhelpful real estate agent, the ominous cellar, the chill that seeps into every corner, and the omnipresent mold spreading without cause. Áine sprials further into melancholy with every day spent in the flat, but with a partner who brushes off her concerns and nowhere else to go, she resigns herself to wait out the lease.
As the title suggests, this book explores the concept of what makes a home and how we grow around our environment. I really related to Áine and I loved she adapted and changed over the course of the book, gradually at first and then in a crescendo. She has great dry wit and I saw myself in a lot of her attitudes towards her partner, domesticity, friendships and work. Through Áine, the author offers commentary on coming-of-age when things aren't going well and I will read that all day everyday. Elliot is a fantastic companion character to Áine because they contrast well against one another and he's the kind of man everyone has met and can probably join in Áine's disdain to some extent. Áine's relationships outside of her newfound domestic bliss are strained across the board, including her newly estranged bestie-turned-houseboat-renovator who has become wrapped up in her own relationship and left Áine behind. The author does a great job of putting multiple forces to work to keep Áine inside the house and thus worsen her situation.
I have no idea why but I did find this quite a slog to get through for the first 2/3 or so (the end I devoured) and I often found myself only reading 5-10 pages at a time. I think it could have hit its peak sooner because there was a lot of repetition in the first half and this involved the point just be remade over and over again with little new information being added. This is described as 'a ghost story set in the rental crisis' and I feel this may set unrealistic expectations. Early on there is a super creepy ghost story moment that gave me goosebumps and I couldn't wait for more, which I sadly didn't get. It has a wonderfully eerie atmosphere but I was waiting for something else to happen and it rarely did. I appreciate literary horror because it's not as on the nose as classic horror but I just think this book didn't live up to its potential. The tagline also sets you up for a good laugh (in my opinion) and if you pick it up for that reason alone you'll be let down. There's some great wit sprinkled throughout but the tagline almost sounds sitcom-y??
Overall I really enjoyed the writing and how erratic this book is. I would be very interested in reading more from this author.
ARC review
Áine is in a period of new beginnings in her life. She is moving in with her boyfriend, Elliot, for the first time and experiencing a new way of living without her long-term roommate and friend. They find a flat in an upmarket neighbourhood, and despite Áine's spoken and unspoken reservations, they're moving in before they know it. Áine is immediately unsettled, by the unwelcoming upstairs neighbours, the unhelpful real estate agent, the ominous cellar, the chill that seeps into every corner, and the omnipresent mold spreading without cause. Áine sprials further into melancholy with every day spent in the flat, but with a partner who brushes off her concerns and nowhere else to go, she resigns herself to wait out the lease.
As the title suggests, this book explores the concept of what makes a home and how we grow around our environment. I really related to Áine and I loved she adapted and changed over the course of the book, gradually at first and then in a crescendo. She has great dry wit and I saw myself in a lot of her attitudes towards her partner, domesticity, friendships and work. Through Áine, the author offers commentary on coming-of-age when things aren't going well and I will read that all day everyday. Elliot is a fantastic companion character to Áine because they contrast well against one another and he's the kind of man everyone has met and can probably join in Áine's disdain to some extent. Áine's relationships outside of her newfound domestic bliss are strained across the board, including her newly estranged bestie-turned-houseboat-renovator who has become wrapped up in her own relationship and left Áine behind. The author does a great job of putting multiple forces to work to keep Áine inside the house and thus worsen her situation.
I have no idea why but I did find this quite a slog to get through for the first 2/3 or so (the end I devoured) and I often found myself only reading 5-10 pages at a time. I think it could have hit its peak sooner because there was a lot of repetition in the first half and this involved the point just be remade over and over again with little new information being added. This is described as 'a ghost story set in the rental crisis' and I feel this may set unrealistic expectations. Early on there is a super creepy ghost story moment that gave me goosebumps and I couldn't wait for more, which I sadly didn't get. It has a wonderfully eerie atmosphere but I was waiting for something else to happen and it rarely did. I appreciate literary horror because it's not as on the nose as classic horror but I just think this book didn't live up to its potential. The tagline also sets you up for a good laugh (in my opinion) and if you pick it up for that reason alone you'll be let down. There's some great wit sprinkled throughout but the tagline almost sounds sitcom-y??
Overall I really enjoyed the writing and how erratic this book is. I would be very interested in reading more from this author.
Read
March 24, 2025DNF @ 54%
I had such high expectations for this one, but it ultimately just wasn't for me. I think stories that conceptually lean towards the speculative, but in practice are deeply rooted in the realm of litfic are such a specific niche, and everyone's likely to approach them from a different place, expect different things from them, and take away very different things from aforementioned books.
Thematically, I appreciate Lanigan's exploration of the haunted-ness of a housing crisis, and the tension of feeling the oppressive natural of this house that cannot be a home, yet being unable to leave it much as you might wish to. In terms of characters, I also found Áine and her circle to feel true to life, and I particularly found her almost feverish descent into madness to be compelling on paper, but I never got fully invested in her narrative, which oddly felt both static and chaotic to me. I can see the argument for this dichotomy serving to drive in the nonsensical nature of this post-modern, late stage capitalist horror tableau, but it didn't help make me wish to pick up the book once I'd put it down, or keep reading.
I think if you like stories in the vein of THE PALLBEARER'S CLUB or WOMAN, EATING, you'll want to give this a go. Overall, I can see this working for a lot of readers, it just felt a little bit middling for me.
I had such high expectations for this one, but it ultimately just wasn't for me. I think stories that conceptually lean towards the speculative, but in practice are deeply rooted in the realm of litfic are such a specific niche, and everyone's likely to approach them from a different place, expect different things from them, and take away very different things from aforementioned books.
Thematically, I appreciate Lanigan's exploration of the haunted-ness of a housing crisis, and the tension of feeling the oppressive natural of this house that cannot be a home, yet being unable to leave it much as you might wish to. In terms of characters, I also found Áine and her circle to feel true to life, and I particularly found her almost feverish descent into madness to be compelling on paper, but I never got fully invested in her narrative, which oddly felt both static and chaotic to me. I can see the argument for this dichotomy serving to drive in the nonsensical nature of this post-modern, late stage capitalist horror tableau, but it didn't help make me wish to pick up the book once I'd put it down, or keep reading.
I think if you like stories in the vein of THE PALLBEARER'S CLUB or WOMAN, EATING, you'll want to give this a go. Overall, I can see this working for a lot of readers, it just felt a little bit middling for me.
April 6, 2025
I received an advanced reading copy of this book via NetGalley.
The haunted house as a metaphor for grief, or abuse, or mental illness, or anything else, is really nothing new, and for people who read and watch a lot of horror I think it’s become a little stale at this point. It would be easy to lump I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There into that category and to dismiss it as a result of that, but I think there’s a lot more going on here and that would be a real shame.
The first thing to say about I Want To Go Home… is that it’s brilliantly written. The characters feel like people I know and have known, and it’s very keenly observed. It taps into a very specific generational issue around housing insecurity that I’d guess anybody younger than 40 in the UK has suffered through, and a lot of the time I felt like I was reading a biography of my own life. It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, and that does a great job of making the creeping dread that slowly builds over the course of the year in which we follow our protagonists feel even more impactful.
I suspect that a common criticism of this book will come from people who went in expecting a horror novel and got a piece of literary fiction. I’d argue that it is still a horror novel, but the supernatural element - the haunting - takes a back seat to the much more mundane horrors of being a Millennial (or maybe even Gen Z at this point) trying to live in London and maintain any sort of quality of life.
Personally, I liked the fact that the haunting is subtle and largely ambiguous. While you could certainly read this as a metaphor for mental health issues, the doubt that this ambiguity creates - is the haunting real? is it all in Áine’s head? - brought a depth to the novel that I really appreciated. At one point in the novel Áine reflects on the time that she took her boyfriend to Ireland to meet her parents, and how he reacted with scorn and amusement to the stories of the banshees that have plagued her family. She tells him that he isn’t a believer. She is. The ambiguity of the haunting is asking us to decide whether we’re non-believers like Elliot, or whether we see ourselves in Áine.
I really enjoyed this and would absolutely recommend picking it up.
The haunted house as a metaphor for grief, or abuse, or mental illness, or anything else, is really nothing new, and for people who read and watch a lot of horror I think it’s become a little stale at this point. It would be easy to lump I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There into that category and to dismiss it as a result of that, but I think there’s a lot more going on here and that would be a real shame.
The first thing to say about I Want To Go Home… is that it’s brilliantly written. The characters feel like people I know and have known, and it’s very keenly observed. It taps into a very specific generational issue around housing insecurity that I’d guess anybody younger than 40 in the UK has suffered through, and a lot of the time I felt like I was reading a biography of my own life. It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, and that does a great job of making the creeping dread that slowly builds over the course of the year in which we follow our protagonists feel even more impactful.
I suspect that a common criticism of this book will come from people who went in expecting a horror novel and got a piece of literary fiction. I’d argue that it is still a horror novel, but the supernatural element - the haunting - takes a back seat to the much more mundane horrors of being a Millennial (or maybe even Gen Z at this point) trying to live in London and maintain any sort of quality of life.
Personally, I liked the fact that the haunting is subtle and largely ambiguous. While you could certainly read this as a metaphor for mental health issues, the doubt that this ambiguity creates - is the haunting real? is it all in Áine’s head? - brought a depth to the novel that I really appreciated. At one point in the novel Áine reflects on the time that she took her boyfriend to Ireland to meet her parents, and how he reacted with scorn and amusement to the stories of the banshees that have plagued her family. She tells him that he isn’t a believer. She is. The ambiguity of the haunting is asking us to decide whether we’re non-believers like Elliot, or whether we see ourselves in Áine.
I really enjoyed this and would absolutely recommend picking it up.
June 16, 2025
Lovely writing but sometimes a little bit too overwhelming. I was expecting a little bit more of the plot, but I think the last sentence does it justice.
I didn’t like the fact that the book is advertised as ‘renting is a nightmare’ as if it addressed the rental crisis happening in UK and Ireland. It does mention it, but I don’t consider it as important as to be the first sentence in the synopsis.
I didn’t like the fact that the book is advertised as ‘renting is a nightmare’ as if it addressed the rental crisis happening in UK and Ireland. It does mention it, but I don’t consider it as important as to be the first sentence in the synopsis.
April 28, 2025
This book went nowhere fast
August 8, 2025
Ha sido la cosa más repetitiva y sin desarrollo que he leído en mi vida
August 15, 2025
3.5 rounded down !
not sure i particularly liked a single character, but something about Áine resonates a lil
not sure i particularly liked a single character, but something about Áine resonates a lil
January 2, 2025
This is one of those books one will either love or hate - nothing in between. It's extremely densely written, essentially a non-stop sequence of descriptive details about almost everything from renting a flat to living as a couple on a daily basis, the entire plot revolving around a very stressed and introspective female character - a rather annoying woman, if one does not approach her story with (lots and lots of) patience and eschew judgement. The writing is consistently and (almost certainly) intentionally flat: Lanigan's storytelling skills, though impressive, are directed towards draining the story out of all emotional upheavals or strong feelings: even when the couple gets bitten by the dog they brought home, noone is allowed to feel upset - not even the reader; when the couple fight, the background calm and quiet are never disturbed. In fact, the only sounds permitted to affect the story are the ones belonging to the supposed haunting.
The claustrophobic silence, weirdly, does not strengthen the sense of anyone's feeling haunted: on the contrary, it slowly drowns everything in ambiguity, uncertainty and a deep sadness.
The poor woman finds herself feeling attacked on all fronts, yet she never really responds to the assumed crisis: she goes on repeating the same thoughts and the same moves day in day out, eroding both her relationship and friendships. Several times I felt tired out by this behavior: it just never clicked for me, it never made sense to me, but I kept going seduced by the deceptivelt easy and bland writing style, and the promise of a haunting; the latter never really materialized, but Lanigan's excellent writing did manage to hold my interest to the end.
I recommend the book to readers who can appreciate a film like Polanski's Repulsion (1965): Lanigan's characters are banned from both genuine feeling and complete withdrawal, and perhaps this is their kind of madness. The book, the way I read it, very effectively brings out precisely this - to the detriment, apparently, of many readers.
The claustrophobic silence, weirdly, does not strengthen the sense of anyone's feeling haunted: on the contrary, it slowly drowns everything in ambiguity, uncertainty and a deep sadness.
The poor woman finds herself feeling attacked on all fronts, yet she never really responds to the assumed crisis: she goes on repeating the same thoughts and the same moves day in day out, eroding both her relationship and friendships. Several times I felt tired out by this behavior: it just never clicked for me, it never made sense to me, but I kept going seduced by the deceptivelt easy and bland writing style, and the promise of a haunting; the latter never really materialized, but Lanigan's excellent writing did manage to hold my interest to the end.
I recommend the book to readers who can appreciate a film like Polanski's Repulsion (1965): Lanigan's characters are banned from both genuine feeling and complete withdrawal, and perhaps this is their kind of madness. The book, the way I read it, very effectively brings out precisely this - to the detriment, apparently, of many readers.
February 5, 2025
Huge thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for the ARC!
Seeing the world through (MC) Áine’s eyes feels like returning to pick at a wound before it has had time to heal.
Lanigan’s purposefully drab yet enticing writing style melts you down and pours you into Áine’s world. A thick sort of comfort blanketed me progressively throughout the book, and I found myself feeling equally frustrated and kindred with Áine.
With witty commentary on the state of the rental market and the general economy, the vast majority of readers will undoubtedly hear their own thoughts echoed within the narrative.
All in all, the novel feels like a mucky sort of hug and an ode to young people who feel tossed about by both their environments and their emotions. A promising debut from an exciting new voice in the literary landscape ⭐️
Seeing the world through (MC) Áine’s eyes feels like returning to pick at a wound before it has had time to heal.
Lanigan’s purposefully drab yet enticing writing style melts you down and pours you into Áine’s world. A thick sort of comfort blanketed me progressively throughout the book, and I found myself feeling equally frustrated and kindred with Áine.
With witty commentary on the state of the rental market and the general economy, the vast majority of readers will undoubtedly hear their own thoughts echoed within the narrative.
All in all, the novel feels like a mucky sort of hug and an ode to young people who feel tossed about by both their environments and their emotions. A promising debut from an exciting new voice in the literary landscape ⭐️
May 30, 2025
2.5 🌟
The premise had great promise but not sure the execution lives up to it. Mainly because the gothic tropes like infested, mouldy, isolated habitation and unhinged neighbours in London is 100% believable - this is how most young people live (same with the mental health problems and difficulties obtaining medication) - so it reads more like a totally believable contemporary fiction instead of an ambiguous potentially irrational gothic text.
I enjoyed the read for the first half or so; until I realised there was zero plot. I found the ending dissapointing and it felt potentially problematic for me. It implied that everything had been because of her (not looking after her) mental health - or maybe the message was that poor living standard impacts mental health. But I don't think so as the point was she managed her mental health properly and then never felt the same fear/doom again.
The writing was also disappointing. The writing style was detached and had no atmospheric impact which is key for gothic literature. It was also confusing and needed editing in places; paragraphs were typically very long and needed to be broken down and some subordinates clauses reduced and general editing when sentences were difficult to read. The gothic tropes weren't fully developed; it felt like a lot of tell rather than show - such as the absent upstairs neighbours.
I wanted to really like this but it didn't have the desired gothic effect. It needed much more conceptual development and more refined writing.
The premise had great promise but not sure the execution lives up to it. Mainly because the gothic tropes like infested, mouldy, isolated habitation and unhinged neighbours in London is 100% believable - this is how most young people live (same with the mental health problems and difficulties obtaining medication) - so it reads more like a totally believable contemporary fiction instead of an ambiguous potentially irrational gothic text.
I enjoyed the read for the first half or so; until I realised there was zero plot. I found the ending dissapointing and it felt potentially problematic for me. It implied that everything had been because of her (not looking after her) mental health - or maybe the message was that poor living standard impacts mental health. But I don't think so as the point was she managed her mental health properly and then never felt the same fear/doom again.
The writing was also disappointing. The writing style was detached and had no atmospheric impact which is key for gothic literature. It was also confusing and needed editing in places; paragraphs were typically very long and needed to be broken down and some subordinates clauses reduced and general editing when sentences were difficult to read. The gothic tropes weren't fully developed; it felt like a lot of tell rather than show - such as the absent upstairs neighbours.
I wanted to really like this but it didn't have the desired gothic effect. It needed much more conceptual development and more refined writing.
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