Homesick

By Catrina Davies (Riverrun, 2019)

This memoir records Catrina Davies’ decision to abandon her attempts at conventional city living and to return home to Cornwall in order and to try and make a life there even though she lacked any of the necessary financial resources to do so.  This decision and the struggles that followed made me think.   A lot.  Davies’ rejection of convention inspired me too and as I read Homesick, I found myself wanting to be more practical and more innovative in my daily life.  I also found myself wanting to be more lateral in my thinking about how I define purpose and meaning in my life.

I have read a great deal of non-fiction this year because, I think, the Covid-19 pandemic has felt such a shocking twist in our collective narrative that I have not wanted to absorb myself in make-believe.  Instead, I’ve wanted to anchor myself in real people and real events and this marks a sea-change in my reading life given that I have, since the age of eleven, wanted to be Anne of Green Gables making mischief on Prince Edward Island circa 1910.  

In fact, as an orphan desperately in need of a home, Anne of Green Gables would have related to Catrina Davies’ struggle to make sense of her life and to create a home in a place that now belongs to the economically privileged, those who can afford holiday homes and expensive restaurant meals.   As Davies explores in Homesick, having a sense of self is not enough: home has to be a place, our bodies need spaces in which to live if we are to feel rooted and secure.  For Davies, making her Cornish home poses legal, personal, ethical and financial difficulties.  There is kindness in this memoir and there are disasters too; there is also courage, creativity and surfing.  As I finished the final chapter, I began to re-assess my own definition of freedom and the ways in which I am liberated, tethered, rooted and connected and I am grateful to Davies for nudging me towards a new pattern of thought.