Róisín Lanigan: “I moved to London and I had bedbugs” | Horror book

RÓisín Lanigan, 33, grew up in Belfast and studied at Queen’s Belfast University before moving to London to work as a journalist. She previously covered pop culture in identifier Magazine, and now contributes the editor -in -chief of The Independent Quarterly THE Fence. His first absorbent novel, I want to go home but I’m already there (Fig Tree), redone the haunted genre of the house for the rental age, after a millennial couple, Áine and Elliott, while they move together first. Soon, Áine begins to think that the apartment is against them, and Lanigan follows in an incisive way the very modern descent of his character in despair.

So far, you have worked as a journalist. Have you always wanted to be a novelist?
I always wanted to write fiction, but it is one of those jobs that feel so out of reach. It took me a long time to take it seriously and to believe that I could do it, especially when it comes to doing characters. It is a strange start of the one where everything is factual and you cannot invent quotes.

Where does the idea of ​​your novel come from?
I started writing it in 2022. I had just returned to London after being in Belfast for part of the pandemic, working remotely. So I had to re -engage myself with the London rental market. At that time, the owners were desperate that you moved to their apartments because they had been empty, so their prices were quite low. If I left him six months later, I would have really had trouble. I have lived in London for 10 years now, so I saw all the permutations of the London rental market – the book has come out.

Why was horror the right approach?
I am a big fan of horror. I read a lot on haunted houses and thinking about how all the haunted house stories essentially concern the possession of properties and the huge burden that places you psychologically. And then I thought, I wonder what is the equivalent for us, as millennials that rent? At the same time, I saw a lot of my friends – and myself – start living with their partners much earlier than we had been conditioned to think that you could do it, for financial reasons.

This brings complications, if you are not quite ready to take this step. So the book is a ghost story in the rental crisis, but it is also the experience of this young woman in a situation that she finds more and more intolerable and the way she has no debate to express this.

Your protagonist, Áine, is quite impregnatedable. What was your intentionion?
When you look at the stories of traditional horror and ghosts, women are always disinterested. They are often women and mothers. They hold everything together. It has always bored me. I wanted to write about the people I saw. There are many young women like Áine who are apathetic and uncertain and are not led to domesticity.

The dialogue seems very realistic. Have you borrowed a lot from real life?
I have this very bad habit where, if I hear someone say something ridiculous, I write it in the notes application on my phone. I wanted the dialogue to be naturalistic and thorny, reflects the way people really talk to each other. The other part based on reality is in the long section where Áine scrolled through Rightmove and is terrified by the rental lists it finds. These are all drawn from real Rightmove advertisements. In fact, I did not come back to them during the writing of the book because what I saw continued to worsen, so I would replace them with wildest.

What are your worst rental stories?
I moved to London with just a suitcase – it was the most Irish thing in the world. I moved into someone’s friends room and immediately had bedbugs. I had to throw everything and start again. It was a little favorable start. But I think the worst experience I had is the woman who cries, the banshee. She was our owner and was constantly crying not to take care of the house as she wanted. I finally took my revenge: she left a case of champagne under the stairs, and I drank it.

How to resolve the rental crisis?
I think there are certain things that will help, such as the law on the rights of tenants, if it ends with no fault. Currently, there is this massive power that owners have more tenants – I feel like I can do what they want. These are also accommodation: we just don’t build enough houses. And I think there is a problem in the way we talk about cultural property. It is completely toxic as some people aspire to be owners; That there are young people who want to build properties of properties, who want to return the houses and rent them. If we talk about it as a normal career choice, it is a sign of a deeply ill culture.

What books do you best think represent the life of the millennium?
One of the things I read when I wrote my book was Common decency By Susannah Dickey – He has a lot of interesting themes around community surveillance and obsession. I also loved Evenings and weekends by Oisín McKenna. This is to know when the party is over and when you may have to leave London. I found it very relatable.

What is your favorite literary horror story?
I really like Daisy Johnson SistersAnd Yellow wallpaper (By Charlotte Perkins Gilman). These are not necessarily horror stories, but stories about young women who experience things that are not quite correct and how people around them react. I also like the melodrama of The horror of Amityville (by Jay Anson).

What books are on your bedside table?
I’m about to start Rejection By Tony Tulathimutte because then I am interested in writing on solitary and “incels”. I want to write a novel on violent male crimes and how we metabolize this as an older or people who knew the person, but also as a journalism machine – how we transform these things into glasses. I also have a copy of the new version of Andrea Dworkin Right -wing womenWhich seems very premonitory.

• I want to go home but I’m already there by Róisín Lanigan is published by Fig Tree, £ 16,99. To support the Tutor And Observer Order your copy at Guardianbookshop.com. Delivery costs may apply