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No Place Like Home
No Place Like Home
Jan 19, 2026 2:29 AM

Author:Various

No Place Like Home

Place of refuge, place where we can be ourselves; place we long to escape from, place where we are confronted by absence and loneliness; shabby downtown apartment or idyllic country cottage. Like it or loathe it, home is where we do most of our living.

Home is, of course, many things to many poets. It is Billy Collins's favourite armchair and Imtiaz Dharker's 'Living Space' in the slums of Mumbai. It is Wordsworth's 'dear Valley' of Grasmere, and Philip Larkin's Coventry, that place where nothing so famously happens. It may be somewhere we long for, perhaps unattainably: Ovid and Mahmoud Darwish lament their home countries, Kapka Kassabova seeks 'a house we can never find', while Jules Supervielle is 'Homesick for the Earth'.

There is an abundance of domestic life. Attend a miserable breakfast chez Jacques Prévert; observe Wendy Cope and partner happily 'Being Boring'. Cut to Anna Barbauld's washing-day, Marilyn Nelson dusting, Buson mending his clothes and Fiona Wright contending with a Tupperware party. Peep in on Amy Lowell in the bath and John Donne in bed, Auden in the privy and Joy Harjo at the kitchen table. Here are removals and homecomings, neighbours good and bad. Inevitably, after a year of enforced domesticity, some lockdown thoughts (Anna McDonald, Pauline Prior-Pitt); Mary Oliver's dream house, Naomi Shihab Nye's homes where children live, the far-from-safe houses of U. A. Fanthorpe, and some final reflections on the idea of a dwelling place from Rumi, Emily Dickinson, John Burnside, Vinita Agrawal, Derek Walcott, Les Murray and Iman Mersal.

It may not always be sweet, but there is certainly No Place Like Home.

Reviews

Haunting... A soaring sense of history and solidarity pervades Gorman's debut collection... Call Us What We Carry is wide awake to the complex strata of human history and restlessly original in its poetic form... This is poetry rippling with communal recognition and empathy

—— Kit Fan , Guardian

A book of poetry so alive you want to hold it and protect it, to read it all at once, and then immediately read it again

—— Malala Yousafzai

Powerful... poignant... tender... Amanda Gorman's debut proves that she is poetry's brightest young thing

—— Eliz Akdeniz , Tatler

Between breath, light, water and soil, text messages and letters, and visual formations of ships, whales and flags, Gorman's Call Us What We Carry is an inventive literary resurrection

—— Daily Mail

Amanda Gorman is a seer, a seeker, a speaker of our most difficult and astonishing truths. Reading these poems, I feel at once haunted, heartened and formidably ministered to

—— Tracy K. Smith

A new collection full of hope and healing from the young American poet who electrified the world

—— Guardian, *50 Biggest Books of Autumn 2021*

A thoughtful gift for Christmas, but make sure to get one for yourself too

—— Waitrose Weekend

In "penning a letter to the world as a daughter of it," Gorman doesn't merely transcribe a diary of a plague year; her bold, oracular pronouncements bear witness to collective experience, with an uncanny confidence and a prescient tone that are all the poet's own

—— Kevin Young , The New Yorker

Empathic... Gorman has a talent for speaking directly and precisely, but knows, too, the power of embellishment

—— Ellen Peirson-Hagger , i

A poet of real promise

—— Daily Telegraph

The liberating force of the stories these poems tell about our resilience and survival showcase a powerful griot for our times

—— Joshunda Saunders , Oprah Daily

I think we all need more poetry - specifically her [Amanda Gorman's] poetry - in our lives

—— Emma Jane Unsworth , i, *Christmas Gift Guide 2021*

An inspired anthem for the next generation-a remarkable poetry debut

—— Kirkus

Many forms (including some erasures, among other visual frameworks, such as poems that look like text message bubbles) give this collection impressive variety. Gorman's thoughtfulness and activist spirit shine through on every page

—— Publishers Weekly

How Gorman has arrived so young at a place of such accomplishment is as compelling as her art itself... She is a Gen Z Angelino who brings the fresh self-awareness and frankness of youth to these pages with a prosody that is as playful as it is stern

—— Julie Lythcott-Haims , Independent

Amanda Gorman is a force to be reckoned with... [an] impressive collection... she's most poignant and shows her masterful use of the English language... pretty inspiring stuff from a young poet who's just at the start of her career

—— Prudence Wade , UK Press Syndication

Gorman is at her best when stripping things down... There, she's most poignant and shows her masterful use of the English language... inspiring stuff

—— Prudence Wade , Yorkshire Post

A fascinating portrait of a world of politics, manners, morals and the decline of empire in a period of rapid societal change... Hadley writes compellingly fascinating characters viewed from every angle, perfectly encapsulating an era of change.

—— Kirsty McLuckie , Scotsman

A gorgeously magnanimous novel, which reprises Hadley's favoured themes of middle age, and how - and when, and if - to change one's life.

—— Stephanie Sy-Quia , Spectator

Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive exploration of love, sexual freedom and living out the most meaningful version of our lives.

—— SheerLuxe

An engrossing ploy, elegant nuanced writing...this is a novel to savour

—— Morag MacInnes , Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

As ever, Ms Hadley's prose is limpid and measured yet richly sonorous: her story combines a modern sensibility with the psychological realism of writers such as Henry James... The ending glimmers with possibility--while suggesting that liberation comes at a cost.

—— Economist

With astute psychological awareness of her characters, Hadley presents a visceral and engaging picture of a bygone time. Unexpected twists and unclichéd characters support the luscious language, making this a real pleasure of a read.

—— UK Press Syndication

Free Love artfully delves beneath the veneer of the British middle class to tell an intimate story of generational discord, political change and sexual freedom.

—— Mark Vessery , i

Hadley's resplendent eighth novel... [has] poignantly astute observations on class, destiny and the false promises of the sexual revolution.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on Sunday

Hadley's eighth novel is as absorbing as any of her other fiction, with complex family secrets, brilliant insights...and lush descriptions of nature.

—— Markie Robson-Scott , Arts Desk

Hadley chooses her words with spellbinding precision.

—— Claire Allfree , Metro

Hadley's complex sentences are purring marvels of engineering... A brilliant writer of interiority...she has a gift...for portraying the state of wanting to be wanted, or simply to be seen... almost every page struck me anew with some elegant phrasing, feline irony or shrewdly sympathetic insight.

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

Few contemporary novelists write about their characters' inner worlds with a finely filigreed but plain-spoken acuity that Tessa Hadley brings to her work...accessing roving, rich depths... Hadley is a master in her field.

—— Lucy Scholes , Daily Telegraph

"With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she's one of the greatest stylists alive. . . . To read Hadley's fiction is to grow self-conscious in the best way: to recognize with astonishment the emotions playing behind our own expressions, to hear articulated our own inchoate anxieties. . . . The whole grief-steeped story should be as fun as a dirge, but instead it feels effervescent-lit not with mockery but with the energy of Hadley's attention, her sensitivity to the abiding comedy of human desire. . . . Extraordinary.

—— The Washington Post

Brilliant.... In the hands of a lesser novelist, the intricate tangle of lives at the center of Late in the Day would feel like just such a self-satisfied riddle or, at best, like sly narrative machinations. Because this is Tessa Hadley, it instead feels earned and real and, even in its smallest nuances, important.... It's to her credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once.... We've seen this before, and we've never seen this before, and it's spectacular.

—— New York Times Book Review

Utterly engrossing... Free Love is highly gratifying.

—— Ellen Peirson-Hagger , New Statesman

Free Love is a triumph.

—— Sarah Collins , Prospect

Brilliantly done... Hadley writes with devastating psychological insight, her prose spare and scalpel sharp. But she is also judiciously non-judgemental, a generous chronicler of the foibles and fears that mar and make a marriage.

—— Eithne Farry , Daily Express

Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.

—— Sarra Manning , Red

[A] brilliant, sensual, seductively plotted new novel... Hadley has written an extraordinary story about love and transformation.

—— Independent

Free Love is often deeply perceptive and affecting... it lets you imagine what it was like to wrestle with old and new ways of thinking in an age that shaped (and continues to shape) our own.

—— Guy Stevenson , Literary Review

It's the 1960s and socialism, sex and nuclear anxiety have come crashing into the middle-class bubble Tessa Hadley novels usually operate so brilliant within.

—— The Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*

A story about change and its limits, its beautifully judged ending will bring you to tears.

—— Daily Mail, *Summer Reads of 2022*

[An] acutely realised, deeply humane novel... Unmissable.

—— Tablet, *Summer Reads of 2022*

No novel published this year gave me more pleasure than Tessa Hadley's Free Love.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Nothing drew me in as conclusively as Free Love by Tessa Hadley, who is surely one of our most astute and deft observers of everyday lives.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Hadley's novels continue to get better and better - and this is her finest, most pleasurable yet... it's near enough the perfect present in book form

—— Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*

She is, in all her mastery of the craft, a writer's writer.

—— Marie Claire
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