| Title | : | Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0007148232 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780007148233 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 451 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2004 |
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.
Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House Reviews
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I'm actually not 100% sure what I thought of this book. I was really attracted by the premise - a search to find out about all the people who had ever lived in the author's house. Of course, this is helped by living in a 200 year old house in London - doing the same for my 1960's house in the middle of a housing estate probably wouldn't be as interesting!
The author mixes fact and fiction, by adding little scenes and stories that she imagines about those people, as well as actual anecdotes from surviving relatives or people who knew the tenants. It did get a bit confusing though with so many names and inter-relationships between everyone, but once I stopped trying to work that out and just read the words, I did enjoy it. I wouldn't say I loved it, but it was interesting, funny in places and highlights the difficulties and red tape involved in tracing such things ;) -
interesting idea, but I was bored. She presented the investigation of all the people who lived in her home before her in a too detached dry way that lost my interest.
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I really enjoyed the idea of this book and researching the history and people who lived in their home before them. And I really enjoyed the first half of the book.,then, it lost me with its repetition. I just got bored, but I may eventually finish it out of curiosity.
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I really liked the concept of this book and it made me think about my house and the previous homes that i have lived in. i didn't like mix of non fiction and fiction in this book, it didnt work for me. i think she should have just stuck to a non fiction, factual book as i found it really interesting how she found out about all these families. I found myself skipping the made up stories of the people, especially towards the end of the book when she was in the 1800s. Overall I did enjoy it but found it a little hard going at times.
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An excellent book. A different type of biography, not only of all the people who had lived in her house from when it was built in 1872 but of the house itself. Julie Myerson has done a thorough amount of research and produced a fascinating history which kept me intrigued and wanting to read more.
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I saw a review about this book several years ago and added it to my wishlist on BookCrossing. My P365 Secret Santa sent me this copy for Christmas. I realize it has taken me quite some time to finish reading the book, but I have been reading it off and on the entire time. I enjoyed it very much, and the subject matter lends itself to reading in bit and pieces. I guess it means I've been able to enjoy the book over several months, because I don't think there was a single month when I didn't read any of it.
Julie Myerson was already a published author when she began to wonder about all the people who had lived in her family's house over its 130 year history. She decided to make that a research project and write about the book. She learnt a lot about how to research people and families, aided by her husband, and occasionally her teenaged daughter. Her two sons don't seem to have helped with the research, but they showed some interest in what she found. Myerson then also became interested in the different houses she had called "home" over the years, and goes to see what has become of them.
This is mostly non-fiction, Myerson telling of the process of her research and what she has found, but also partly fiction. She uses her imagination to paint pictures of what the people might have thought and done. Sometimes she learns a new fact and goes back and re-imagines the scene from a different angle.
At the very end of the book, there is a website to check up on what else has been found out about the house. I will look that up, and find the house on the map, too. -
2010 bookcrossing: Wow, this was such a good read. Certainly a long one, not something to be rushed over, but I did really enjoy it. I didn't realise how much information it's possible to get about people, and to see how much detail she managed to get together in the end is quite impressive.
I loved this idea of history that goes with the house, and how the residents become part of that. I know some people say they wouldn't want to live anywhere that someone has died, but that kind of thing doesn't really go through my mind. We moved into our first house recently, but it's only 40-50 years old, so I don't suppose there's that much history to it yet! In a way, this all almost relates to bookcrossing in that we're following the biographies of these books and seeing where they go and what the next reader does with them.
I did get a bit muddled with all of the names and the family trees from time to time - there was a lot in there. I can imagine this must be a great book for anyone who actually did live there. I wonder what will happen to it all when she eventually moves out. I tried the website given at the end of the book but nothing comes up. Maybe they're not thinking about this project anymore.
Occasionally I got the slightest sensation of a patronising attitude towards old people - that when you get to a certain age you will be decrepid and you will be senile. Which was a bit dull; but I didn't pick up on this all the time, so it is a very minor winge. -
I stayed up until 5 o'clock in the morning reading this. Well, OK, I couldn't sleep, so I kept turning the light on and reading just one more chapter... I'd give it slightly less than 5 stars if not for this fact, because I did find that at times I got a bit confused by the enormous cast of historical characters Myerson unearthed in her research. But I found it utterly fascinating, and completely understand the impulse to go back and find out, as Myerson did, as much as she could about every person who had ever lived in her London home in its 130 year history.
It also was a most poignant read, as she writes about her own family, now deeply damaged by the drug addiction of her son, which she documents in her new book "The Lost Child". I haven't read that book yet, but have read a lot of the commentary around it, and so was sad to see this family a few years earlier—and a few of the storm clouds gathering, as well.
Left my library copy (renewed!) with my parents to read, and they both loved it too. Recommended, if you're fascinated by history and people. -
I was quite surprised to find this book getting some lousy ratings when I looked it up on Amazon as I really enjoyed it. It's subtitled "The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House" and I think it manages to tell that story nicely. It's not how to find out the history of your own house and it is a story - don't read it if you wouldn't normally read a novel.
I thought the stuff about the author's own life (for example her thinking about all the houses that she'd lived in and what happened there) and her family (for example the reactions of her own children to finding out about and in some cases meeting people who have lived in their house) were great additions to the story of the house itself. In many cases Myerson expands on the facts that she's discovering by inventing tales about the previous residents (embellishing facts rather than inventing I suppose) and I thought these bits worked well. It could have turned out to be a dull parade of facts about a house but it wasn't. -
Novelist and columnist Julie Myerson attempts to trace the histories of everyone who ever lived in her Victorian house, which entails many hours in dusty archives, contacting hundreds of people who may be descendants, and imagining the lives of her homes past inhabitants. She also revisits the houses she herself lived in throughout her life and tries to make sense of a difficult relationship with her father.
This is an interesting book, in turn history, autobiography and fiction (as regards the detailed imaginings about the lives of the house's original incumbents), but it felt too long to me and I found myself flagging the middle. Perhaps would be best suited to reading in sections and not straight through from beginning to end. -
I loved this. She became obsessed with the people who'd lived in her house, just as I am, but she has more interesting characters to work with. I was more interested in the real things about the people than in the little speculative scenarios she invented, but she's a novelist, and it didn't take away from the other part of the story to have them in there. I'm going to go off to the book's website and see what is there. I'll probably read this again, and it makes me want to go spend the day at the Maryland Archives trying to find more about my house people (Maryland's records online aren't as good as some other states and I'm getting nowhere with it). Also it was such a relief to see that her daughter is way snottier than mine...
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Read on holiday in a cottage in Ruswarp North Yorkshire. The night my mother stayed I had to choose a single bed in the loft area with the likelihood of wasps falling on my head from a gap in the rafters or one away from the danger area but with no light. Julian (husband) came to my rescue with a little torch and it was just like my childhood reading under the covers. Just my sort of subject the sentimental past but I did get a little bored in parts.
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I liked the idea of this book and the style of writing - alternating between fact and fiction. I didn't remember much of the detail as in names and dates or take that much notice of that part of the writing it was the story I was most interested in and which captivated me enough to make me want to read on to the end of what was a fairly hefty book.
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I loved this book with all it's seperate stories.recommended.
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I always knew I loved old houses with their sense of history and continuity. Makes me want to start researching!
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Didn't finish, got bored.
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Genealogy of the pre internet, this is real work to find out in hard way rather than using internet
