Wednesday 23rd April
6.30 to 9pm
Join us for an exciting evening with Róisín Lanigan in conversation with Oisín McKenna to discuss her debut novel, I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There, a darkly funny ghost story set in the rental crisis.
I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There is a haunted house story set during the rental crisis about the nightmare facing generation rent, it’s recognisable, relatable and very funny. It’s about the emotional homelessness of young adulthood and about how the pressures of forced domesticity and rental profiteering can fracture your psyche and destroy your relationship.
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. 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. 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. 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 wonderfully clear-eyed portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging, it examines what it means to feel at home.
Róisín Lanigan is an editor and writer based in London and Belfast. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian and The Fence, amongst other publications. She was longlisted for the Curtis Brown First Novel Prize in 2019, and won the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2020. I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There is her first novel.
Oisín McKenna grew up in Drogheda, Ireland, and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends and it was developed with further funding from Arts Council England. In 2022, he was awarded a London Writers Award, and in 2017 Oisín was named in the Irish Times as one of the best spoken-word artists in the country. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and his writing has appeared in the Irish Times, GQ, Evening Standard, Fantastic Man and more