The home by Karen Osman: A spoiler-laden review as I have questions!

The home is another novel I picked up from my local library without any knowledge of the author. The blurb was enough to draw me in; that, and the writer being British.

Looking Karen Osman up, I discovered that The home is the second in a three-book deal with a UK-based publisher after her first novel, The good mother, won an award at the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature in 2016. Osman also runs a successful niche communications company and has academic qualifications in linguistics, English language, and teaching English as a foreign language. I had high expectations of The home!

The home | Published September 2018 | Read December 2023

Osman's second novel follows the story of Angela, abandoned by her mother to a children's home in 1970s England but later adopted by a wealthy, loving couple, James and Rosemary. Angela ends up with the life she craves and the support she needs to become a successful lawyer. The story is largely set in the present, in 1989, after Angela receives some bad news about her father's health and is encouraged to locate her birth mother.

The novel jumps between Angela's present-day story and diary entries from her time in the children's home. There are other voices in the novel, too, from Rosemary's point of view, and Evelyn's, Angela's birth mother. I didn't mind the time jumps between the diary entries and the present as the different voices were clear and the chapters short. The diary entries charting Angela's experiences in the children's home were difficult to read, though, and the abuse and neglect were made even more real by the diary entry approach. I found those chapters deeply disturbing.

The blurb states that Angela's search for her birth mother is motivated by a desire to heal the scars of her childhood yet strange and sinister events threaten Evelyn's safety as Angela embarks on her search. I think this is a somewhat inaccurate description of the book and I found myself reading something I wasn't expecting. There was a disconnect between the Angela of the diary entries and present-day Angela that I initially ascribed to her desire to forget her traumatic childhood but later found linked to the implausible ending. Angela only searched for Evelyn at her father's insistence and never seemed keen to establish a relationship with her. I didn't understand this, particularly given the book's blurb. I get that James's health was suffering but I don't quite understand his motivations for pushing Angela into finding her birth mother.

You can stop here if you don't want to read the below spoilers. Suffice to say, I gave this book a low rating and would not recommend you read it. The payoff for 350+ pages is definitely not there and the book left me wondering "what did I just read?"

Warning...spoilers ahead...

I was on board with the book until the last part when everything fell apart. I did wonder about some inconsistencies, random events and implausible situations as I was reading it, but not enough to lessen my enjoyment. By the end, I was completely confused. The ending was abrupt, strange, and didn't make sense. I've gone back to read the last bits again and still the ending makes no sense.

The appearance of a new character in the last few pages of the book completely threw me and added to my confusion. I've been (pleasantly) shocked at an ending before that I didn't see coming, but never as confused and disappointed as I was reading The home. The terrible ending made me realise that I didn't actually like any of the characters and didn't care what happened to them.

Apart from my ongoing question of why James wanted Angela to find her birth mother, I didn't understand what the murders in the flat opposite Evelyn's had to do with the main narrative. Maybe nothing. I guessed that James was Angela's birth father before that twist was revealed but I didn't guess the final twist, largely because it was completely implausible and meant that the book I had just read made zero sense. All that I knew about Angela went out the window and ruined her story for me. Her work life, described in great detail in the book, ended up having nothing to do with story and neither did her relationship with Mitchell, who disappeared without explanation at the end. All the characters bar Evelyn behaved inconsistently towards the end of the novel, again to the detriment of the story and the reading experience. In particular, I didn't understand both James and Rosemary's actions in the final part of the book and nothing they did helped me grasp the ending better. Thinking about the silly ending too much makes my brain hurt as it impacts so much on the story leading up to it. I'm frustrated that I made it to the end with zero payoff. How did this book even get published?

Rating: ⭐