Irish authors reading list

Reading lists

10 must-read books by Irish authors

Róisín Lanigan

Absorbing and eerie ... Full of wry observations about the status markers of modern life ... Lanigan has a beautiful and distinct writing style, and her book is a hugely enjoyable portrait of the horrors of renting in London

A very funny and original take on the vagaries and indignities of endless renting ... Rife with sharply observed but subtle insights on class and money

A deeply compelling and melancholic modern ghost story, which draws upon the tropes of gothic to examine with piercing precision and wry humour the insidiousness, malignancy, and all-encompassing bleakness of the housing market. This novel is sharp and sad and incisive

Susannah Dickey, author of Common Decency

A smart, funny and, occasionally, terrifying story of love, rental and millennial angst. With rare skill and eerie precision, Lanigan captures the small joys and mundane horrors of the current moment. Beautifully written, frequently hilarious, and maddeningly real.

Seamas O'Reilly, author of Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

Róisín Lanigan has been threatening to be the next great Irish writer for ages, so I'm glad she's finally sat down and done it

This novel deftly pulls off so much at once - it's compulsively readable, thrilling and tense, laugh-out-loud funny and emotionally astute. I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There is one of the best things I've read on the psychological horrors of private renting, and what damp, overpriced flats can do to our emotional lives. Hilarious, horrifying, truly original. I loved it

Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends

So unsettling and atmospheric and just devastatingly sad ... An intensely strange and claustrophobic novel, in which a young couple’s attempts to establish a home together give way to unsettling surreal episodes and disturbing lapses in the protagonist’s memory. Róisín Lanigan masterfully draws on ghost story tropes to suggest the nightmare of being trapped in financial insecurity and a bad relationship. What I really loved about this novel, though, was its resistance to a single interpretation; it had a powerful ambiguity that lingered in my mind long after I’d finished reading.

A gothic novel for generation rent - an uncanny, hilarious story about a young woman haunted by her flat

Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain

Millennial renting with a gothic twist ... Gripping and hauntingly relatable, Lanigan’s dark humour and sharp prose will resonate with anyone who’s braved the absurdities of the rental market

So, so good ... It is this balance between the classic and the modern that Lanigan gets so right ... An unnerving, beautifully teased-out novel that gives as much as it takes

Impressive ... A chilling ghost story cleverly interwoven with the anxieties, paranoia and claustrophobia of renting, and the commersurate pressures on relationships and friendships ... Perfectly portraying the dark absurdities of modern living, this will be perfect for fans of Eliza Clark, Julia Armfield and Naoise Dolan

This very modern ghost story set against the backdrop of the rental crisis is set to be a classic. Darkly funny, this portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging will have you laughing then weeping in quick succession. A great book club select

Elle – The cult books we can’t wait to read in 2025

When Aine moves in with her boyfriend, she knows she should be content — but there’s something creepy about their flat. Imagine the rental crisis, except it’s a ghost story

The Sunday Times – The 40 books to look out for in 2025

A housing crisis quasi-horror story that had me on the edge of my seat... Fans of Megan Nolan and Eliza Clark will love this brilliantly politically charged page-turner

I honestly don’t know whether this is a ghost story, a psychological thriller, a coming of (adult) age novel, or a love story gone wrong, but I can say with certainty that it will remain with me long after I’ve figured that out

... like most horror stories, [I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There] has allegorical undertones - postcolonial tensions, the fragility of mental and physical health, the loneliness of an unstable relationship, and more, all simmer beneath the surface

There is much to love about this book: its humour, its use of mould (there isn’t enough mould in fiction) and its themes of inequality (Áine’s childhood respiratory issues are relevant). It’s a brilliant satire of London’s horrific housing market

A funny, smart and extremely timely book about love, loss and London leaseholds … Showcases Lanigan’s rare skill for skewering the agonising trifles of modern life, elevated with lived-in characters and gripping, stylish prose …One of the best, and buzziest, reads of 2025 so far, and one we can’t recommend highly enough

Róisín Lanigan's brilliant new novel reinvents the haunted house genre for the age of forever-renters

Lanigan re-imagines the gothic haunted house tale for a millennial audience, creating nuanced characters who hold a mirror back to us, begging the question ‘am I like this too?’

Lanigan has her characters and their point in time nailed ... It is exciting to see this period, only recently defined, already recorded so attentively ... Lanigan’s ambition here seems to be to test the limits of the millennial novel. Her caustic social commentary is undercut by a supernatural mystery horror. Strange apparitions and paranormal intrusions lift the novel into a atypically fantastical realm, and its highest pleasures come when Lanigan leaves behind familiar clipped prose and plunges headlong into gothic deliria ... I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a document of hellish times and a map of our relationships with others, ourselves, and our demons – metaphorical and literal.

What Lanigan has lighted upon is that there is something inherently ghostly about the whole rental process ... I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There might be a ghost story, yet it is also a visceral, sometimes unbearably realistic exploration of how renting can take a truly frightening psychological toll – scarier even than looking up property prices on Rightmove

This is a clever, urgent novel about the absurdities of the rental market

The particular genius of I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There is the way in which it draws on ghost story tropes in order to do so. You only need to look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to understand that the horror genre has always been a manifestation of society’s deepest anxieties – whether about the terrifying scientific developments at the time or the nightmares of housing today – making a haunted-house story an eerily perfect fit ... There is also plenty of humour to cut through the horror ... A succinct summary of how it feels to be part of Generation Rent

A dark, witty ghost story about the housing crisis

Lanigan is excellent on the real-life horror of the rental market

A brilliant and unnerving mixture, like the unholy offspring of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and Rightmove

A good way of understanding my generation and our problems

Razor-sharp ... Genius ... With plenty of dark laughs along the way

Most readable ... The voice of her generation ... Compelling, well-written, and very much of its time, this is a book that you will be unable to put down

Absorbing and eerie: a ghost story that will bring you both chills and chuckles

Topping & Company Booksellers of St Andrews

An eerie, dark horror about the rental market, this novel is written beautifully and is an insightful (and accurate) exploration of the housing crisis. A brilliant portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging, as well as an examination of what it means to feel at home

Smart, pacey … a sharp and witty read, best enjoyed far from damp and oversized rats

Sunday Times, 40 great novels to bring to the beach

It may be the debut novel from writer and editor Róisín Lanigan, but it reads like the work of a seasoned author

Renting is a nightmare. 
 
Áine should be feeling happy with her life. She’s just moved in with Elliot. Their new flat is in an affluent neighbourhood, surrounded by bakeries, yoga studios and organic vegetable shops. They even have a garden. And yet, from the moment they move in, Áine can't shake the sense that there's something not quite right about the place... 
 
It's not just the humourless estate agent and nameless landlord: it's the chill that seeps through the draughty windows; the damp spreading from the cellar door; the way the organic fruit and veg never lasts as long as it should. And most of all, it’s the upstairs neighbours, whose very presence makes peaceful coexistence very difficult indeed. 
 
The longer Áine spends inside the flat - pretending to work from home; dissecting messages from the friends whose lives seem to have moved on without her - the less it feels like home. And as Áine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott...

Róisín Lanigan

Articles featuring Róisín Lanigan

10 must-read books by Irish authors

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