I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There
- Author Róisín Lanigan
- Narrator Ruby Campbell
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Run Time 8 hours and 53 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Contemporary horror and ghost stories, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Social issues, Urban communities.
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
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 existence 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.
'A deeply compelling and melancholic modern ghost story ... Examines with piercing precision and wry humour the insidiousness, malignancy, and all-encompassing bleakness of the housing market' SUSANNAH DICKEY, AUTHOR OF COMMON DECENCY
'Beautifully written, frequently hilarious, and maddeningly real' SEAMAS O'REILLY, AUTHOR OF DID YE HEAR MAMMY DIED
'Very funny and original ... Rife with sharply observed but subtle insights on class and money' RACHEL CONNOLLY, AUTHOR OF LAZY CITY
'Róisín Lanigan has been threatening to be the next great Irish writer for ages, so I'm glad she's finally sat down and done it' JOEL GOLBY
© Róisín Lanigan 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Critics Review
This novel deftly pulls off so much at once – it’s compulsively readable, thrilling and tense, laugh-out-loud funny and emotionally astute. I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There is one of the best things I’ve read on the psychological horrors of private renting, and what damp, overpriced flats can do to our emotional lives. Hilarious, horrifying, truly original. I loved it
So unsettling and atmospheric and just devastatingly sad … An intensely strange and claustrophobic novel, in which a young couple’s attempts to establish a home together give way to unsettling surreal episodes and disturbing lapses in the protagonist’s memory. Róisín Lanigan masterfully draws on ghost story tropes to suggest the nightmare of being trapped in financial insecurity and a bad relationship. What I really loved about this novel, though, was its resistance to a single interpretation; it had a powerful ambiguity that lingered in my mind long after I’d finished reading.
A gothic novel for generation rent – an uncanny, hilarious story about a young woman haunted by her flat
Millennial renting with a gothic twist … Gripping and hauntingly relatable, Lanigan’s dark humour and sharp prose will resonate with anyone who’s braved the absurdities of the rental market
So, so good … It is this balance between the classic and the modern that Lanigan gets so right … An unnerving, beautifully teased-out novel that gives as much as it takes
Impressive … A chilling ghost story cleverly interwoven with the anxieties, paranoia and claustrophobia of renting, and the commersurate pressures on relationships and friendships … Perfectly portraying the dark absurdities of modern living, this will be perfect for fans of Eliza Clark, Julia Armfield and Naoise Dolan
This very modern ghost story set against the backdrop of the rental crisis is set to be a classic. Darkly funny, this portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging will have you laughing then weeping in quick succession. A great book club select
When Aine moves in with her boyfriend, she knows she should be content — but there’s something creepy about their flat. Imagine the rental crisis, except it’s a ghost story
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