"'A little piece of home’: what home is to Vanessa Greene and her characters in The Little Pieces of You and Me
Home. What a powerful pull that word has – the sense of safety and belonging. With time I’ve come to see home as something solid and very valuable, but it certainly wasn’t always like that. For most of my teens and twenties, I couldn’t get far enough away from it. I had a happy childhood in our family home in north London, but I didn’t want to stick around longer than I had to. I was glad to pack my bags and leave for university, and packed them again (and again) to travel around the world in my early twenties. When I did finally come back to settle in London, I moved around rental homes – Holloway, Blackheath, Highgate, Stockwell – and the bags became boxes. Always packing and unpacking.
With each move came new friendships and adventures, with each goodbye and close of the familiar door, a tinge of sadness. Then life changed, and what I wanted changed. As it does for Isla in my novel, home became something I longed for.
I hope I’ve just unpacked my final box. Now that I’m a mum, I want my son and daughter to feel as grounded as I did – to give them the stable start in life, to grow up with their aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents close by. To give them something to fly away from one day. And – hopefully – to want to return to."
Thank you so much Vanessa!
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