Discovering Home

For readers that love a good memoir, nothing can compare to the unique style and layout of Brooke Berman’s No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments (256 pages, Harmony Books, $23). This memoir explores Berman’s life through the places that she lived, with the majority of the book taking place in and around addresses in New York City. Like any other person that’s ever had a dream of making it somewhere, Berman chose New York as the place to be in order to make it happen. She attends Barnard College for awhile, then puts all of her efforts into her future as a playwright. She is also spends a lot of time making sure she has a place to go home to at night, working her way through roommates, sublets, and couch surfing.

This book mostly takes place in the 1980’s and 1990’s so much of what Berman describes is not necessarily the high class, shiny city that many people think of how New York is now. She also dips in and out of the city going to various workshops and retreats for her career that bring on more and more interesting people along the way. There are many dark parts to her story, such as bad relationships, crimes committed on her and the general feeling of “Where do I belong?”

Any reader looking for a uniquely real and honest memoir will enjoy this book. Berman’s thoughtful prose will keep you reading until the very end.