Product Description

Ever thought about all the people who lived in your house before you? Julie Myerson did, and set out to learn as much as she could about their fascinating lives. This is the biography of a house, the history of a home. It's an ordinary house, an ordinary home, and ordinary people have lived there for over a century. But start to explore who they were, what they believed in, what they desired and they soon become as remarkable, as complicated and as fascinating as anyone. That is exactly what Julie Myerson set out to do. She lives in a typical Victorian terraced family house, of average size, in a typical Victorian suburb (Clapham) and she loves it. She wanted to find out how much those who preceded her loved living there, so she spent hours and hours in the archives at the Family Record Office, the Public Record Office at Kew, local council archives and libraries across the country. Like an archaeologist, she found herself blowing the dust off files that no-one had touched since the last sheet of paper in them was typed. As she scraped the years away, underneath she found herself embroiled in a detective hunt as, bit by bit, she started to piece together the story of her house, built in 1877, as told by its former occupants in their own words and deeds. And so she met the bigamist, the Tottenham Hotspur fanatic, the Royal servant, the Jamaican family and all the rest of the eccentric and entertaining former occupants of 34 Lillieshall Road. The book uncovers a lost 130-year history of happiness and grief, change and prudence, poverty and affluence, social upheaval and technological advance. Most of us are dimly aware that we are not the first person to turn a key in our front door lock, yet we rarely confront the shadows that inhabit our homes. But once you do -- and Julie Myerson shows you how -- you will never bear to part from their company again. This is your home's story too.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93303 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Review
'Part memoir, part historical fiction, part sleuth-like detective story: it works on every level. The people she unearths are as vivid as characters in a novel, and it makes you think about your own home in a way you never did before' Esther Freud, Telegraph Books of the Year 'Home is as absorbing - and often entertaining - as any thriller ! The result is a triumph.' Observer 'The idea behind Home is beautiful in its simplicity ! An engrossing read.' Guardian 'Masterly and moving ! A fascinating exercise in social history.' Daily Telegraph 'Pure magic ! A wonderful book.' Philip Hensher, Spectator

Telegraph
'the novelist’s deft touch with detail and fascination with people will keep you turning the pages.’

Guardian
'the elegant simplicity of its premise and beautifully wrought execution…it’s a captivating read.'

Customer Reviews

original and absorbing
i like julie myerson`s work, and was not dissapointed with this book. I liked how she mixed fact and fiction ; finding out who lived in her house, then making a fiction account of how she imagined they would have talked and behaved. She found out things about some people that she never imagined and i liked the insight into other peoples lives. Very original idea....

Surely not that poor?
I read this book some time ago, but have just got round to browsing these reviews, and am very surprised that 'Home' has been rated so poorly. I thoroughly enjoyed it, found it interesting and insightful and had no problem with the way in which it was written. Previous reviewers seem to have wanted a chronological history, and Myerson could of course have taken the approach of the more recently published 'The House By The Thames' and done a straight 'the house was built in 18** and the first occupants were the X family who lived there for Y number of years and then the Zs moved in....' but she has tried to be a little more ambitious and , to my mind, it pays off very well. Some seem to have had a problem with too much detail about the current occupants, and with Julie delving into her own past - but it is subtitled 'The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived In Our House', and that does include the Myersons, surely? I have generally found that Julie Myerson's fiction flatters to deceive, but I think she has got this one spot-on.

It could have been great.........
I thought this was a fantastic idea for a book, and just reading about it inspired me to start finding out who had lived in my house as I live in a very similar house in a similar area of London. Sadly I found it surprisingly disappointing. I wanted a factual account of who the people were and what they did, especially during WW2 - which was hardly mentioned. I can see the thought process behind the whole imaginary story thing, but it just didn't work. The author is a novelist and obviously wanted to make her characters come alive, but I wanted to know what they actually did, not what the author thought they might have done.

I think also there was far too much about her own family and one paragraph after another about the people who frequent the Family Records dept etc. - who cares about them?! I also think the book was poorly edited and should have contained a clear family tree of the people in the house at the beginning of the book for reference as the narrative was confusing and rambling. I couldn't work out where some of the families were connected. I wonder if the author herself knew!

Perhaps the book could have benefitted from some better and deeper research and it would have been more satisfying to have contained more real information about the interesting people from the past and less about the author and her children.