The Home Corner - By Ruth Thomas
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Edinburgh, 1991. Having flunked her exams, eighteen-year-old Luisa McKenzie finds herself back at school – this time working as a classroom assistant. Instead of leading a new ‘sophisticated’ life as a student in London, she spends her days trundling to and from her childhood home, sitting on the outside of the ‘Home Corner’ in a class full of five year olds. A chance encounter one afternoon with Stella, a former schoolfriend who has, herself, gone on to ‘greater’ things, wakes Luisa up to her disappointments. With a school trip and a magic show on the horizon, Luisa’s hold on reality slowly begins to unravel.
Funny, and full of insight, The Home Corner looks at the way we create our own identities in the light of other people’s, and queries the distinctions that are made between the real and the imagined. It is also a novel about home, and leaving it.