Book Review: I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There by Roisin Lanigan
About the book
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 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 presence 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.
Why we love it
If you’ve ever walked away from a place while house-hunting because it just didn’t feel right or talked yourself into one because it had a good vibe, even if it didn’t quite tick every box, you’ll probably find this book relatable.
I’m definitely that person - a firm believer that buildings store emotions within them, memories of previous inhabitants absorbed into stone and mortar in some as yet unquantifiable way, irrevocably changing the character of the home for future occupants.
Áine, a twenty-something social media professional from Enniskillen, now living in London, definitely has a bad feeling about the flat she’s just rented with her boyfriend Elliot.
They’re moving together for the first time, the seemingly obvious next step in their relationship, so when they finally find a place that’s affordable, available and has a garden attached, it seems to good to be true. At least Elliot thinks so.
For Áine though, it’s the start of twelve months of scrubbing endlessly at mouldy walls, feeling watched by curtain-twitching neighbours, and never being quite sure what’s real and what’s not.
One of the most compelling things about the novel is its ambiguity. Is the flat actually haunted with something malevolent and parasitic that only Áine can sense? Is it perhaps toxic mould poisoning, a negligent landlord, or unsavoury neighbours? Or could Elliot and her friends be right and it's all just in her head?
As the story unfolds, we learn that Áine has a history of mental health struggles, but that doesn’t necessarily mean her experiences are any less real. If anything, it deepens the slow, suffocating tension that builds throughout the book because the real horror doesn't actually come from whether the flat is haunted or not. It's the nightmare of being trapped together in a 12-month lease that they can’t afford to escape while the place which should have been their safe haven from the world outside, slowly destroys their health, their sanity and their relationship.
A truly unsettling, sharply observed and uncomfortably relatable read especially if you’ve ever found yourself living in a place that didn’t quite feel right - highly recommended!
