Susanna Crossman – författare

A Guardian book to look out for for 2024'A bold and intimate grappling with the hidden history at the heart of a childhood that was set up as a collectivist social experiment' EWAN MORRISON, author of How to Survive Everything'Strikingly good' NOREEN MASUD, author of A Flat PlaceIn the turbulent late seventies, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside. They would share their new home with over fifty other residents from all over the world, armed with worn paperbacks on ecology, Marx and radical feminism, drawn together by utopian dreams of remaking the world. They did not leave for fifteen years.While the Adults adopted new names and liberated themselves from domestic roles, the Kids ran free. In the community, nobody was too young to discuss nuclear war and children learned not to expect wiped noses or regular bedtimes. Instead, they made a home in a house with no locks or keys, never knowing when they opened doors whether they’d find violent political debates or couples writhing under sheets.Decades later, and armed with hindsight, Crossman revisits her past, turning to leading thinkers in philosophy, sociology and anthropology to examine the society she grew up in, and the many meanings of family and home. In this luminous memoir, she asks what happens to children who are raised as the product of social experiments and explores how growing up estranged from the outside world shapes her as a parent today.'Crossman writes with such curiosity and heart-breaking honesty of what it is to find her own truth. I was enthralled by this book' LILY DUNN, author of Sins of my Father'Beautiful, bold, tender. I loved this gorgeous memoir about making home' PRAGYA AGARWAL, author of Hysterical

In the turbulent late seventies, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside. They would share their new home with over fifty other residents from all over the world, armed with worn paperbacks on ecology, Marx and radical feminism, drawn together by utopian dreams of remaking the world. They did not leave for fifteen years.While the Adults adopted new names and liberated themselves from domestic roles, the Kids ran free. In the community, nobody was too young to discuss nuclear war and children learned not to expect wiped noses or regular bedtimes. Instead, they made a home in a house with no locks or keys, never knowing when they opened doors whether they’d find violent political debates or couples writhing under sheets.Decades later, and armed with hindsight, Crossman asks what happens to children who are raised as the product of social experiments. Revisiting her past, she turns to leading thinkers in philosophy, sociology and anthropology to examine the society she grew up in, and the many meanings of family and home.

The siesta hour, France. Bees fly in lavender bushes. Anna has just come home, but something is wrong. She fears nothing will ever be right again.Anna is haunted by the death of her only child, Lou. After her son’s death, Anna has a breakdown and is hospitalized. In the psychiatric ward, Anna becomes determined to undo death by writing everything down in a set of orange notebooks: fragments and tales about bees, death rituals, her London childhood, the story of her relationship with Lou’s Basque father, Antton, their meeting on a ferry on the day Princess Diana died, Anna’s consequent obsession with the English Channel, a cursed trench coat, the duplicity of beige, Lou’s Jewish and Basque heritage, and the role of bees because their wax made the candles that light the path of the dead. In the hospital Anna meets Yann, a Breton Sea captain. Together, they go on an Orphic journey to the underworld, sailing from Finistère in his boat to the middle of the English Channel, to try and find Lou at the exact point where his destiny began. Myth and reality collide, allowing Anna to begin the healing process.

The siesta hour, France. Bees fly in lavender bushes. Anna has just come home, but something is wrong. She fears nothing will ever be right again.Anna is haunted by the death of her only child, Lou. After her son’s death, Anna has a breakdown and is hospitalized. In the psychiatric ward, Anna becomes determined to undo death by writing everything down in a set of orange notebooks: fragments and tales about bees, death rituals, her London childhood, the story of her relationship with Lou’s Basque father, Antton, their meeting on a ferry on the day Princess Diana died, Anna’s consequent obsession with the English Channel, a cursed trench coat, the duplicity of beige, Lou’s Jewish and Basque heritage, and the role of bees because their wax made the candles that light the path of the dead. In the hospital Anna meets Yann, a Breton Sea captain. Together, they go on an Orphic journey to the underworld, sailing from Finistère in his boat to the middle of the English Channel, to try and find Lou at the exact point where his destiny began. Myth and reality collide, allowing Anna to begin the healing process.