Susanna Crossman

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

Crossman's extraordinary memoir of the tyranny of her childhood is heartbreaking, eye-opening, and difficult to put down

iNews, The best new books to read in August

Engrossing ... Examines philosophical and sociological perspectives on the meaning of home, giving insight into why utopias are unattainable

Ambitious, compelling ... The diarist’s sense of urgency and the child’s creative use of language have stayed with her, often producing vivid prose

I hugely admire Crossman’s resistance against the tyranny of it all – and her constant will to survive

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

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.

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

Ewan Morrison, author of How To Survive Everything

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.

Beautiful, Bold, Tender. I loved this gorgeous memoir about making home

Crossman is strikingly good on how children pay the price for adult utopian fantasies, as props and as scapegoats

Home is Where We Start joins an important conversation about the damage done to children by 1970s parents who gave up conventional family life for utopian ideals, but ended up chasing an ephemeral dream. Moving between the personal and theory, it is an important analysis of what home means to us all. Writing through image and objects, through metaphor and symbolism, Susanna takes us right into the heart of her unconventional childhood, full of joy and neglect, of wonder and pain. She writes with such curiosity and heart-breaking honesty of what it is to find her own truth. I was enthralled by this book, and how Susanna in the end uses her own experiences of neglect as a superpower, to create a loving home and to help those in need of care.

A brilliant memoir - a touching, propulsive and shocking portrayal of a childhood in a utopian community, framed by a fascinating exploration of what it means to create a space called home

Sam Mills, author of The Fragments of my Father

A gripping account of a childhood lived among idealist zealots: detailed, lyrical and full of insight, told with the dispassionate eye of the anthropologist, but also the emotional engagement of the adult looking back at the child

Rebecca Stott, author of In the Days of Rain

Authentic, irreverent and generous. Crossman breathes fresh life into a childhood spent living in an experimental community in the English countryside. In vivid, staccato prose, she plunges from screamingly funny episodes into fear and despair, conjuring dizzying freedoms, strange new ‘rules’, the constant lack of privacy and the bright hopes that magnetise everyone around her. It’s a miracle she emerged intact to gift us this story, shot through with understanding and forgiveness

Page-turning, poignant, and often unsettling ... In vivid prose, Crossman crafts a luminous narrative interwoven with reflections on child development, insights from her experiences as both a mother and a therapist, cultural criticism on utopia, and musings on the meaning of home. As she delves into child psychology and social experiments, she explores how life in the commune has shaped her identity and set her apart—or not—from others ... This remarkable book vividly resurrects a transformative period in history, offering a child’s perspective on a radical social experiment whose consequences she would carry throughout her life. An extraordinary and thought-provoking read

A powerful personal account and a cool-headed study of the long-term effects of utopian projects

Growing Up in the Fallout of the Utopian Dream

In the turbulent late seventies, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside. They would share their new home with over fifty other residents from all over the world, armed with worn paperbacks on ecology, Marx and radical feminism, drawn together by utopian dreams of remaking the world. They did not leave for fifteen years. 
 
While the Adults adopted new names and liberated themselves from domestic roles, the Kids ran free. In the community, nobody was too young to discuss nuclear war and children learned not to expect wiped noses or regular bedtimes. Instead, they made a home in a house with no locks or keys, never knowing when they opened doors whether they’d find violent political debates or couples writhing under sheets. 
 
Decades later, and armed with hindsight, Crossman revisits her past, turning to leading thinkers in philosophy, sociology and anthropology to examine the society she grew up in, and the many meanings of family and home. In this luminous memoir, she asks what happens to children who are raised as the product of social experiments and explores how growing up estranged from the outside world shapes her as a parent today.

Susanna Crossman

Praise for Home Is Where We Start

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 ...

Crossman's extraordinary memoir of the tyranny of her childhood is heartbreaking, eye-opening, and difficult to put down

Engrossing ... Examines philosophical and sociological perspectives on the meaning of home, giving insight into why utopias are unattainable

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 ...

Crossman's extraordinary memoir of the tyranny of her childhood is heartbreaking, eye-opening, and difficult to put down

Engrossing ... Examines philosophical and sociological perspectives on the meaning of home, giving insight into why utopias are unattainable

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 ...

Crossman's extraordinary memoir of the tyranny of her childhood is heartbreaking, eye-opening, and difficult to put down

Engrossing ... Examines philosophical and sociological perspectives on the meaning of home, giving insight into why utopias are unattainable

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