Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

I Want to Go Home But I am Already There, by Róisín Lanigan, is available now. Penguin

Books An extract from Róisín Lanigan's new novel, 'I want to go home, but I'm already there'

In writing her novel, Róisin Lanigan credits years of renting with allowing her to delve into the paranormal.

Róisín Lanigan’s new novel, ’I Want To Go Home, But I’m Already There’ tells the story of Áine, who has just moved in with her boyfriend Elliot in an affluent neighbourhood in London.

Áine should be happy with life, given her new home is in such a good area, 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…

Here, the author shares her thoughts on rental buildings and all the experiences that come with those — good, bad and mildly terrifying — and includes a chapter from her new book…

THE MOST REPEATED writing advice is ‘write what you know’. I know landlords. Like most people my age, I can delineate the phases of my early to mid-adulthood as a series of landlords.

I left home a little over 10 years ago, and I can’t count on two hands the number of places I’ve lived since. I’ve rented single rooms from agencies, studio flats and bedsits, slept in bunk beds and on sofas. My buildings have been plagued by carbon monoxide leaks and stabbings, windows that don’t shut, and doors that don’t lock. I’ve finally started to believe in sage smudging when I move into somewhere new.

After a while, constant renting, moving all your earthly possessions from one address to the next at the whim of those landlords and with little to no information about the owners themselves or the safety of their properties, is something that becomes normalised.

In a sense the landlord himself becomes the only constant in your life, your life being a non-stop carousel of new addresses, unfulfilled deposits, dwindling hopes of security, homes that are only allowed to be a home for a little while, as long as you behave yourself for the owner and don’t make any changes you can’t undo when you leave. Once that’s normalised, it’s normalised too to begin demarcating your life based not in years, but in tenancy agreements. Where we live matters because it affects our day-to-day emotional state, our frame of mind, but also our relationships.

Just as I measure out my own life in tenancy agreements, I can chart the course of my ups and downs with boyfriends and friends, with flatmates who became enemies and then strangers, or strangers who became friends or lovers, in 12 or 18 or six-month periods, however long I was contractually allowed to stay. This — thinking of your life in the terms of capital given hand over fist to someone else that you might never even meet — is normalised, but it’s not normal.

Writing horror

Once I began to pick apart that expectation of normality, I realised that what was underneath it was rotten and grim. It seemed to me that the only way to properly describe renting — and the feeling of being wretchedly trapped in a situation you feel you can’t ever properly escape — was in the context of horror. After all, every haunted house story is essentially about the financial burden of owning property and being unable to escape it if you think something is not quite right.

Áine, the protagonist of I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There, is not a typical horror heroine. She’s neither a wife nor a mother (and of course, neither a homeowner nor homemaker), but then the book is not a typical horror. She only moves in with her boyfriend, Elliot, in the first place because her best friend and flatmate, Laura, decides that the time has come to move on and move in with her own boyfriend.

Áine is left adrift and uncertain about her own life and where she wants to live it – and more importantly, who she wants to live it with. She could flee her life if only she knew where the door was to let her out of it. The characters in this book could leave if they wanted to, if they really believed they were being haunted. But where would they go, and who would they live with? How can you really escape if all you’re running to is the next landlord?

***

Extract from ‘I want to go home, but I’m already there’…

EVER SINCE UNIVERSITY, Laura and Áine had a tradition called ‘Sad Wednesdays’, where they’d pause mid-­week if they were stressed or miserable and bring all their bedding down in front of the sofa.

They’d watch the worst that their YouTube algorithms could offer – woman reviewing soap, eight hours of elderly Japanese craftsmen making shoes, smoking inside and drinking canned gin and tonics. Afterwards, the flat would reek of tobacco, but they would feel, despite the hangover, cleansed, light, free of misery.

Laura thought it was a good idea to compartmentalise sadness like that, so you could get on with the rest of your week without the heaviness leaking into all the other days. Now, Áine worried about the myriad of emotions bleeding out across her weeks and months without Laura to contain them. Previously, she’d always had Laura there to check whether she was overthinking something, whether she was correct or in the wrong. She could test out all her spirals on the person who knew her best and had seen them already.

9780241668535-b43b906e-8a7b-47bd-8c9a-b3fd1ed1a926 I Want to Go Home But I am Already There, by Róisín Lanigan, is available now. Penguin Penguin

Sometimes she didn’t even have to ask. She’d have a week where she didn’t shower for a few days, where she stayed up all night watching reruns of Family Guy on her laptop in the living room, surviving solely on pick ’n’ mix, and then sleeping 17 hours a day to make up for it, and Laura would notice and ask if everything was okay. Sometimes Áine didn’t even realise things weren’t okay until Laura asked. She missed her friend, but her friend was standing there. It was complicated and it wasn’t.

“And now you get to live with Elliott!” Laura was saying. “It’s going to be so exciting.”

“So exciting,” agreed Áine.

She finished the fizz and put the tinsel in their recycling bin, and thought about how long it would take before it disintegrated into the earth. A long time. Maybe never, actually.

Shared house

It was exciting to move in together. Laura was always right about these kinds of things (things that implied happiness, positivity, personal growth). They constituted many of her specialist subjects, along with the best small plates restaurants in a five-mile radius and the exact length of time to leave between messages to lovers, colleagues, distant relatives and friends in order to appear the perfect amount of ‘breezy’.

Áine was not breezy. Elliott, however, had an air of genuine breeziness that she enjoyed. Together they achieved perfect temperance, she liked to think. And she liked the way he texted her good morning and how they felt the same way about several important things – the necessity of having creative outlets, the unfairness of the British class system, the fact that wrestling was a sport – and that they could argue about things they felt differently about – art-­house movies being pretentious, rom-­coms being art-­house, ready salted being the best crisp flavour, whether it was okay to listen to earlier Smiths songs even though present-day Morrissey was a racist – without heat.

They were arguments where the stakes were so low, nothing was really at risk. They weren’t real. They were safe. And she didn’t like that he lived a 30-­minute train ride away and sometimes more if there were leaves or a dead body on the line, and she didn’t like his two flatmates, anonymous-­ish recruitment consultants he’d linked up with via a Facebook ad when he needed somewhere to live.

They’d had lots of experimental and kind of bad sex when they first met, with mixed results, and now they had sex less regularly but with more success because they both knew what the other person liked.

They were in love, she supposed. This was what love felt like. Maybe. And people in love were supposed to live together. People in love were meant to keep moving towards some sort of tangible end goal, or they’d fall apart. Sharks, Elliott once told her, had to keep swimming, or they would die. Cool, Áine had said, although it was a fact she’d already read on the internet.

I Want to Go Home But I am Already There, by Róisín Lanigan, is available now.

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.

Close
Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy here before taking part.
Leave a Comment
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute james sullivan
    Favourite james sullivan
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:36 AM

    I love all the sporty folk down around the board walk…well I assume they’re athletes with their tracksuits and runners.

    645
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Alan Kennedy
    Favourite Alan Kennedy
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:50 AM

    You’re never far from a medically trained professional either. Someone is always on hand to administer life saving drugs should you need them. What a progressive city. They ever have staff to carry your wallet and phone for you.

    278
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kevin Higgins
    Favourite Kevin Higgins
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 1:13 PM

    Thanks to an outdated drug policy, lack of priority for the gardai and lack of social inclusion. everybody loves highlighting the problem but the solutions already exist just need a decent government to get the job done

    34
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute O Swetenham
    Favourite O Swetenham
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:31 AM

    I’m assuming she didn’t walk along the river on the gouger gauntlet that is the boardwalk. She wouldn’t be comparing it to the Seine then.

    171
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Baz
    Favourite Baz
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:35 AM

    You obviously have not been in Paris recently. They’ve went on strike last month on the Eiffel tower site because of the professional pick pockets knocking about that area around the seine.

    The Hawkers round the Parisian baton rouges are notorious for threatening tourists.

    143
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute O Swetenham
    Favourite O Swetenham
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:58 AM

    I don’t believe you. Dublin is the only capitol city in the world that has lowlifes. I’m assuming that’s why people come to visit us.

    78
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Baz
    Favourite Baz
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:27 AM

    She must be talking about the Liffey around Lucan.

    133
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Allister
    Favourite Allister
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:37 AM

    Do any of the junk balls staggering around drinking cans of devil’s bit get a mention in the article….

    98
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Tom Collins
    Favourite Tom Collins
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:37 AM

    You can’t compare Paris and Dublin.

    42
    See 1 more reply ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute George Hogan
    Favourite George Hogan
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 4:21 PM

    You can. She did.

    28
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Peter King
    Favourite Peter King
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:28 AM

    What do we always get so excited when foreigners say something nice about us.

    130
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kevin M Smyth
    Favourite Kevin M Smyth
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:10 AM

    Because tourism is very important?

    91
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute I LOVE MY COUNTY
    Favourite I LOVE MY COUNTY
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:19 AM

    No I agree with Peter, it’s the same when you see lots of social media outlets sharing Twitter quotes from people in England about seeing Hurling for the first time. Ireland is a proud nation, but I think we care too much what people think of us, it’s good to show we care and take pride in our culture and country, but I think it’s more an inferiority complex with some media, in Dublin especially!

    69
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dave Cork
    Favourite Dave Cork
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:40 AM

    I can see the boardwalk as Dublin’s version of the left bank ..
    So many artists .. It’s a pity they all draw the dole ..

    114
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Integra-Ted
    Favourite Integra-Ted
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:33 AM

    I love Dublin City, but for God’s sakes, what was this writer smoking?

    Both sides of the Quays is basically a motorway separated by a river for starters!

    The Rosie Hackett bridge looks like they bought a bridge kit off Lego, the rest are 3 or 4 lane speedways.

    Not to mention the Irish Zombie Olympic squad openly robbing, dealing, drinking and injecting with impunity!

    107
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kevin Slater
    Favourite Kevin Slater
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:15 AM

    Two guards on the beat is all it would take to clear the scangars away. C’mon guards

    94
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kevin Higgins
    Favourite Kevin Higgins
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 1:14 PM

    There’s a lot more than 2 guards patrolling the dublin 1/2 area. policing won’t solve an addiction and homelessness crises

    27
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ruth McCann
    Favourite Ruth McCann
    Report
    Jun 17th 2015, 4:34 AM

    Come to Vancouver and you’ll see what being homeless really is..
    Vancouver has the highest rate of homeless people in Canada and its shockingly bad to see that in a first world city. I would like the police force and the politicians to do something about it otherwise they’ll end up with a Vancouver 2.0 in Dublin
    I agree with your points though.

    5
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute stopit
    Favourite stopit
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:33 AM

    For me, the liffey is something you cross to get to the posh shops of the southside and come back over without having bought anything, not somewhere to stop and enjoy the city.

    I reckon if DCC start moving traffic away from the quays and pubs/cafes etc. start opening out on to street/boardwalk it will be much much better. It would be great to be able to sit out and feel like the liffey is the heart of the city.

    the first sap to post about “junkies” deserves a slap.

    64
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dog Standard
    Favourite Dog Standard
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 2:14 PM

    Could not agree more. No traffic on the quays would really open up the whole area around the river. Dublin is such an amazing city, so vibrant, so full of fun and friendly people. You can go to a pub and chat with a stranger and its not weird. So many free museums, galleries, amazing bars, great clubs and gig venues, brilliant cinemas like the Lighthouse, great places to eat. You’re never more than 300 feet from a public park in Dublin. I’ve been to well over a hundred cities at this stage and Dublin is right up in the top ten. If you only see junkies you really are missing out. It’s no wonder so many Europeans are coming here to live, we punch well above our weight, the positives far outweigh the negatives. We even have mountains 10 minutes away. Amazing.

    26
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Tertullian
    Favourite Tertullian
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:33 AM

    She may perhaps have had a couple ot Guinnesses too many when she wrote that piece. Dublin is a dump.

    47
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dog Standard
    Favourite Dog Standard
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 2:16 PM

    Dublin is a dump and against the marriage referendum. You need to get out and party. Dublin has the best parties.

    15
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Niall Scully
    Favourite Niall Scully
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:17 AM

    For a capital city Dublin is an embarrassment, with a big stupid needle in the middle.

    31
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dog Standard
    Favourite Dog Standard
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 2:16 PM

    Far superior to Galway. By a long shot. We can do a comparison if you like, kinda like that bit in Lethal Weapon 3 where Reno Russo and Mel Gibson compare scars.

    11
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kevin M Smyth
    Favourite Kevin M Smyth
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:16 AM

    I’m guessing that the writer wasn’t robbed in any of the bars in Temple Bar.

    31
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Showbiz Babyyy
    Favourite Showbiz Babyyy
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:44 AM

    The river Lee is better. Hup oul dat

    28
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Sean Johnston
    Favourite Sean Johnston
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 9:49 AM

    Once a tourist has been to Dublin and realizes what a steaming pile of sh!t the place is and leaves after spending outrages amounts of money in the process, the image of Ireland is forever tarnished in their eyes. They tell anybody who will listen not to go anywhere near Ireland. Dublin airport should be used as an exit

    28
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Sean Johnston
    Favourite Sean Johnston
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:13 AM

    point only.

    8
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dog Standard
    Favourite Dog Standard
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 2:17 PM

    Such a spanner.

    18
    See 1 more reply ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ray Farrelly
    Favourite Ray Farrelly
    Report
    Jun 17th 2015, 6:24 AM

    Is somebody keeping you here against your will

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Bearsass Hairyarse
    Favourite Bearsass Hairyarse
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:10 AM

    What in the name a jayzzzzus was she smokin??

    27
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Richard boyle
    Favourite Richard boyle
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:29 AM

    Cool the North side is the left bank then! Always knew it

    26
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Bobby Quarantine
    Favourite Bobby Quarantine
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 12:27 PM

    Managed to avoid the zombie junkies then? Good girl.

    22
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Qwerty
    Favourite Qwerty
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 10:18 AM

    Didn’t forget to pack her rose-tinted glasses when visiting then.

    20
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute FastBuck
    Favourite FastBuck
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 3:23 PM

    “Like a hip version of the Seine” – obviously visited the tracksuits and sampled their wares

    12
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Colin Forbes
    Favourite Colin Forbes
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 6:10 PM

    Utter rubbish

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute grumpyoldtroll
    Favourite grumpyoldtroll
    Report
    Jun 16th 2015, 12:15 PM

    I read that as ‘kip’ version. I was right the first time.

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Michael Sands
    Favourite Michael Sands
    Report
    Jun 17th 2015, 1:56 PM

    Try swimming in it then?

    1
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.

Leave a commentcancel

 
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds