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Home Thoughts
Home Thoughts
Feb 16, 2026 8:27 AM

Author:Tim Parks

Home Thoughts

Julia has left home. She has gone to Italy. She has left her lover, her job, her flat, the closely-knit group of friends who meant so much to her. Why? And the motley group of ex-pats she finds in Verona, the Oxbridge brigade, the revolutionary Scot, the cool Canadian, the feminist Flossy - why do they find it so impossible to return home, as if their very identities depend somehow on this thousand-mile displacement? Centred around a love story full of twists, turns and revelations, Home Thoughts explores a world of lost directions, wavering commitments and misplaced ambitions as Julia's adventurous departure confronts her more mercilessly than ever with the problem of what on earth she is to do with her life.

Reviews

Karen Chance doesn't disappoint, once again we have an action packed adventure with a strong female character that, while tough as nails, and a dhampir - is also very human

—— SFRevu

A grab-you-by-the-throat-and-suck-you-in sort of book with a tough, smart heroine and
sexy-scary vampires. Just what I like to curl up with. I loved it

—— Patricia Briggs

A really exciting book with great pace and a huge cast of vivid characters. This is one of my favourite reads of the year

—— Charlaine Harris

Stella is stellar

—— Sunday Herald

Stella Gibbons’s gift is very special

—— Daily Express

Murakami reveals throughout, along with turn-on-a-sixpence plotting and joyous satirical energy, a old-fashioned interest and accomplishment in creating a corps of living characters: exotic and eccentric, but always real

—— Scotsman

A world-class writer who takes big risks. . . . If Murakami is the voice of a generation then it is the generation of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.

—— The Washington Post Book World

A Japanese Phillip K. Dick with a sense of humor . . . [Murakami belongs] in the topmost ranks of writers of international stature.

—— Newsday

Loaded with . . . mystery, mysticism, sex and rock 'n' roll. . . . Fast-moving and funny. . . . The narrative voice . . . pulls like a diesel.

—— Los Angeles Times Book Review

The plot is addictive.

—— Detroit Free Press

There are novelists who dare to imagine the future, but none is as scrupulously, amusingly up-to-the-minute as . . . Murakami.

—— Newsday

Vintage Murakami [and] easily the most erotic of [his] novels

—— Los Angeles Times Book Review

[A] treat...Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done

—— Baltimore Sun

Murakami's most famous coming of age novel of love, loss and longing

—— Dazed and Confused

Catches the absorption and giddy rush of adolescent love... It is also, for all the tragic momentum and the apparently kamikaze consciousness of many of its characters, often funny and quirkily observed.

—— Times Literary Supplement

[A] treat . . . Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done.

—— The Baltimore Sun

One of the most poignant and evocative novels I have ever read

—— Palantinate

Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates heartbreak and loss of faith

—— Sunday Times

Quinn brings the period in question vividly to life: his research is exemplary, and his subject absorbing

—— Lucy Scholes , Observer

All the ingredients of an upmarket page-turner

—— Max Davidson , Mail on Sunday

Ambitious, gripping and disturbingly well done

—— Kate Saunders , The Times

Beyond its splendid feel for the era’s chat and patter, the novel pits philanthropy and opportunism, ideals and selfishness, bracingly at odds

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent

This novel is refreshingly different and contains a cornucopia of wonderful material and evocative descriptions

—— Good Book Guide

The best book I’ve read in ages… You have to read it.

—— Hilary Rose , The Times
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