Her boyfriend leaves for work, and Áine Ward is left alone, a miserable woman in a miserable home. She knew that any affordable flat would be mouldy, but the mould in the one she and Elliott share is a “green horror” that regrows faster than it can be scrubbed away. The flat upstairs contains a wailing woman, always heard but inexplicably never seen, and an overcoated man, never heard but seen inexplicably frequently. So begins I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There, the debut novel from the 33-year-old journalist Róisín Lanigan. Lanigan, having once ranked Britain’s male journalists by height in the Fence magazine, can expect her debut novel to find a press at least one-quarter hostile, but there is still much cause for optimism.
Home, for Áine, the narrator and protagonist, long ago ceased to be the Belfast family home or crumby university accommodation. And at the book’s start, it is ceasing to be the subsequent standard twenty-something arrangement: the grad-job London flatshare. Her flatmate and best friend, one of those people “who walked through life golden”, is moving into a houseboat with her soon-to-be fiancé. The only other person Áine has to live with is her boyfriend Elliott, a “good person” who takes her outside, reminds her to drink water, and cares for her “like a little plant he tends to”. The two met at work, but Áine has been disengaged from her job since Elliott changed his. Some time into the story, Áine is granted permission to work from home full-time. Suddenly she has a lot of time alone in the new flat, and must contend with the pressures of her life: relationships, family, finances and much more.
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