This otherwise fascinating account of childhood in a disturbingly liberal commune is somewhat marred by ‘poetic’ excesses
At the time of Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981, Susanna Crossman was nearly nine. “We are against it,” she recalls, “but we watched it anyway… It was beautiful, but I know marriage is a patriarchal institution, a capitalist trap, a snare. You can read about it in Spare Rib, or if you ask community members, someone will tell you marriage is legalised rape.”
For 15 years from the age of six, Crossman lived with her mother, brother and sister on what would generally be called a commune – though members insisted on the word “community”. Fifty people shared a 60-room house on a 31-acre estate in the English countryside, but they were very clearly divided, she writes, into “two distinct social groups”: the Adults and the 18 Kids, between two and 10 years old.
Home Is Where We Start: Growing Up in the Fallout of the Utopian Dream by Susanna Crossman is published by Penguin/Fig Tree (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
