Home Is Where We Start

Reviews

A wondrous book. Brave and beautifully written. An extraordinary anxiety-inducing dive into life in a late-70s/80s utopia, told through a child's eyes. Will live with me a long time. I hugely admire Crossman’s resistance against the tyranny of it all – and her constant will to survive Crossman's extraordinary memoir of the tyranny of her childhood is heartbreaking, eye-opening, and difficult to put down A bold and intimate grappling with the hidden history at the heart of a childhood that was set up as a collectivist social experiment. A true piece of work and one that is historically significant Ambitious, compelling ... The diarist’s sense of urgency and the child’s creative use of language have stayed with her, often producing vivid prose Vivid and painfully honest ... Painful to read but so beautifully done ... There's something of the Levy sensibility here. It's serious and poetic. It's delicate and wise. It's a multilayered excavation, a rich but also careful unfolding of the truth Vivid and poignant ... A powerful memoir of a particularly unusual childhood ... Concrete, disturbing and moving This isn’t a misery memoir. Crossman examines philosophical and sociological perspectives on the meaning of home, giving insight both into why utopias are unattainable and why we shouldn’t try to reach them in the first place Engrossing ... Examines philosophical and sociological perspectives on the meaning of home, giving insight into why utopias are unattainable Brave ... While the author discourses intelligently on the abiding failures of utopias, and interweaves her own experiences as a therapist, I think the primary purpose of the book was to explore and thus exorcise her childhood demons. In this one can only hope she has been successful. Expand reviews