No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments

by Brooke Berman, Brooke Berman (Read by)

Overview

Humorous, poignant, and honest, No Place Like Home is the story of one woman’s journey to feel settled without settling, and her realization that home is much more than an address.

Brooke Berman moved to New York as a wide-eyed eighteen-year-old eager to call the big city home. Candid, funny, and thoughtful, in No Place Like Home, we follow Brooke’s adventures as she crisscrosses town trying to make ends meet and make her dreams of a life in the theater come true.

With each apartment, from the heavenly to the horrible, she learns more about how to heal the past, let go of excess, and keep a sense of humor while trying to stay flexible in the search for stability. No Place Like Home reminds everyone of the age-old struggle not just to find a house, but to build a true home.

The author has included a new introduction written especially for this audiobook.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665059503
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	07/06/2021
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Brooke Berman is an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced across the US and in London. She is a two-time recipient of both the Francesca Primus Award and a Lecomte du Nouy Award. She is also a recipient of a Berilla Kerr Award, a Helen Merrill Award, and a commissioning grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture for the play Until We Find Each Other. Berman’s play Hunting and Gathering was named one of the Top Ten Plays of 2008 by New York magazine.

Editorial Reviews

Peripatetic adventures of a struggling young artist. Celebrated playwright Berman (Hunting and Gathering, 2008, etc.) recounts her early years in New York City seeking the artist's life, love and suitable lodgings. Student dorms, sublets, roach-infested walk-ups, parentally-funded "princess" apartments, couch surfing-the author explored seemingly every permutation of New York real estate as she pursued a classic bohemian existence as a fledgling performer and writer. As the product of a complicated home life, Berman's rootlessness was spiritual as well as physical, and much of the author's self-analysis is couched in New Age terms, with much emphasis on "healing" and "light." Chronically broke, she still managed to find funds for various metaphysical advisors, who counseled her to burn sage in a new living space and consult a Tarot card reader, ostensibly ludicrous advice that perhaps seemed worthwhile in the savage trenches of the Manhattan apartment market. Real darkness enters Berman's memoir in the forms of a traumatic rape that left the author sleepless and paralyzed with fear, and a boyfriend institutionalized for mental illness. She rallied, however, juggling multiple jobs, a diffident younger boyfriend and constant housing crises as she made headway in the theater scene and, triumphantly, was finally invited to join Juilliard's prestigious drama program. Readers will applaud Berman's pluck, but the litany of troublesome roommates, petty arguments, quotidian hassles, artists' workshops and retreats and self-pitying maternal phone calls becomes tedious, as do the author's monumental self-absorption and devotion to dubious spiritual pursuits. Berman certainly struggled to reach ameasure of security and success, but the struggle was a rather ordinary one, untransformed here by the dramatist's art. A candid remembrance that fails as a compelling narrative. Author events and interviews out of New York. Agent: Swanna MacNair/Fletcher & Company

Kirkus Reviews

In this engaging chronology spanning twenty years, from college to hard-won success, the award-winning playwright tells her story of searching for home. The once-aspiring performing artist explores the world through vastly different New York neighborhoods, a series of part-time jobs, an enviable stint at Julliard, and slowly increasing acclamation. She recognizes an undeniable wish in herself to separate from her mother, a wish complicated by the bonds of shared history and an illness in later life. Even after surviving being raped in her early twenties, and insisting on independence, Berman is consumed for years in a yo-yo like love affair. Her writing moves fluidly as she schleps from studio to loft to the occasional luxury apartment, while angst, always present, only occasionally becomes annoying. (Jun.)

Publishers Weekly