Description
Please note event tickets are neither exchangeable nor refundable.
Wednesday 28th October, 7.30pm event start (7pm doors)
Backstory, 71 Balham High Rd, SW12 9AP
With unsettling buildings, social issues and 'modern ghosts' in common, authors Claire Fuller and Róisín Lanigan are joining Clare Chambers (Shy Creatures, Small Pleasures and more) to discuss their respective recent novels, Hunger & Thirst and I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There.
About the books:
Hunger & Thirst
After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job in the postroom of a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and—delightfully— some new friends, including wild-child, Sue.
When Ursula is invited to join a squat at The Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist the promise of a readymade, hodgepodge family. But as Sue’s behaviour and demands become more extreme, Ursula who has always been hungry—for food—and more importantly for love, acceptance and belonging, carries out her friend’s terrible dare. It's a decision that will haunt her for decades.
Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by true-crime documentary-maker who is digging into an unsolved disappearance.
But it is not only the filmmaker who has discovered Ursula’s whereabouts, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without.
I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There
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 presence 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.
Tickets Available:
Ticket only - £15 (This ticket does not include a copy of the book. You can decide to buy a copy on the night, but this will be charged in addition, at the full price of the book.)
Ticket & Hunger & Thirst (RRP £18.99) - £27 To collect on the night
Ticket & I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There (RRP £9.99) - £21 To collect on the night