Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman: a 'delicate and wise' abuse memoir
Crossman revisits her painful childhood in this 'disturbing and moving' memoir
"When Susanna Crossman was six she moved, with her mother, brother and sister, into a rambling mansion in the English countryside," said Christina Patterson in The Sunday Times. The mansion was home to a radical, Soviet-inspired "community" – made up simply of "Adults" and "Kids", to erode the conventional markers of family – and would be her home for the next 15 years.
The Adults had rotating sexual partners, and since there were no locks on the doors, Crossman would often walk in on couples having sex. The Kids were encouraged to be self-sufficient, which in practice meant that they were permanently hungry and filthy, and liable to suffer terrible accidents: one girl set fire to her pyjamas with some candles; another lost half her finger in a sausage machine. "Inevitably", sexual abuse was tacitly accepted: when a man called Lionel invited an 11-year-old Crossman to "spend a night in his Unit", her mother did nothing to intervene. Now in her late 40s, Crossman has revisited her singular childhood in this "delicate and wise" memoir – a book that, while "painful to read", is also "beautifully done".
"It is hard not to feel outraged" by the way Crossman and her peers were sacrificed to the adults' utopian dreams, said Matthew Reisz in The Observer. The kids were permanently freezing, because making sure the boiler worked was considered "symbolic of the patriarchy". Crossman's mother refused to let her take up a place at a grammar school, since she didn't believe in "class inequality". While Crossman's writing about the community is "disturbing and moving", later on, as she describes her efforts to "forge an authentic personal identity", she shows a "weakness for extended metaphors" and pointlessly "poetic" prose. It's a pity that her editor didn't "rein in her excesses".
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Magazine solutions - September 20, 2024
Issue - September 20, 2024
By The Week US Published
-
Magazine printables - September 20, 2024
Issue - September 20, 2024
By The Week US Published
-
6 immersive experiences that bend reality
The Week Recommends Take a journey into the fantastic
By Catherine Garcia, The Week US Published
-
6 immersive experiences that bend reality
The Week Recommends Take a journey into the fantastic
By Catherine Garcia, The Week US Published
-
The Real Thing: Stoppard revival is 'witty' and 'wise'
The Week Recommends James McArdle is 'sensational' in Max Webster's production at the Old Vic
By The Week UK Published
-
Firebrand: Jude Law is 'gloriously disgusting' in Tudor drama
The Week Recommends 'Vividly constructed' film looks at the life of Henry VIII's sixth wife, Katherine Parr
By The Week UK Published
-
A Voyage Around the Queen: 'gloriously bizarre' royal biography
The Week Recommends Craig Brown's book paints a 'vivid and remarkably telling' picture of the late monarch
By The Week UK Published
-
The Perfect Couple: glossy Netflix murder-mystery starring Nicole Kidman
The Week Recommends However hard you try to resist it, 'you will want to know the who, what, where and why-dunit'
By The Week UK Published
-
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party: an 'irresistibly feelgood production'
The Week Recommends Kate Prince's hip-hop take on Lewis Carroll classic is a lot of fun
By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK Published
-
Code-switching: the origins, purpose and pitfalls
The Explainer Balancing your identity and respectability politics sometimes means taking on a different tone or behavior to fit in
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
Apollo 13: Survival – a 'real, rare and breathtaking tale of survival'
The Week Recommends Netflix documentary includes 'remarkable' archival footage from near-disastrous moon mission
By Ellie O'Mahoney, The Week UK Published