The Homecoming

The Homecoming is Zoë Apostolides’s debut novel. Quietly disturbing, it tells the story of Ellen, a young ghost-writer sent to record the memoirs of an elderly woman living in a remote Northumberland manor. Elver House is dilapidated, its faded beauty falling to ruin.

The assignment seems simple enough: Ellen will spend a week conducting interviews at Elver House before returning to London to write Miss Carey’s autobiography. She and her editor know very little about Miss Carey besides her request to be interviewed in person; Ellen’s editor has agreed the dates and gathered scant information, but it’ll be up to Ellen to tease out the story.

The village is remote and rural, and Elver is no quaint country cottage but a wild and sprawling estate. Ellen digs deeper into the history of Elver, preparing to return to London and write her client’s book. In doing so, she must confront much more than she bargained for, and realises that Miss Carey is being haunted by more than the past.

Part mystery, part ghost story, this is a story about isolation, memory, spirits and secrets, intergenerational friendship and motherhood.