Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin
Published by Gallery Books
Publication date: May 6, 2025
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Coming-of-age, New Adult
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Home of the American Circus begins with Freya’s rent being overdue and her appendix bursting. These two events give her no choice but to leave Maine where she lives and head back to her hometown in New York. And not just the town, but her childhood home which was left to her by her parents. Once there she reunites with her best friend, a troubled musician who is also living back at home. He was the only solace she had in a life devoid of affection. Her mother never stopped reminding her of how she had ruined her life by being born and her father, in an effort to appease his wife, ignored her as well. But the greatest damage was done by her half-sister, the one her mother adored, her angel. Who once bit Freya so hard she needed stitches and whose deepest pleasure came from bullying and demeaning the younger sister she never wanted.
This is not a story of abject deprivation and abuse, but a more insidious erosion brought on by decades of psychological warfare, culminating in Freya’s running away as a teen even though it meant leaving the person dearest to her, her niece Aubrey, who was a young child. Now, back inside her ramshackle home, she finds Aubrey again, a teen living out their family’s toxic patterns of conditional, mercurial maternal love and unrealistic expectations. By the midpoint of American Circus I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take the forays into Freya’s past as they were so bleak; years without a scrap of any tenderness or care beyond what was necessary to keep up familial appearances.
Thankfully, at this point the melancholy begins to lift as Freya’s quest to reconnect with Aubrey leads to her re-engaging with people in town. A job as a bartender becomes the stepping stone to her found family: the customers at the bar, her best friend Be. All these people who loved her for exactly who she was and exactly who she is.
The ache in this book is beautifully profound, even as it caused me to flinch with its truth. Larkin taps into subterranean emotions in the human psyche in a simple, small town, no-grand-actions way. Home of the American Circus is for anyone who loves stories of found family, the process of shedding toxic and limiting beliefs about oneself and the journey to finding and accepting your true self, as messy and imperfect as that may be.
If these themes interest you, I’d highly recommend Larkin’s debut novel, The People We Keep.
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*I received a free copy of this book from Gallery Books in exchange for an honest review.*
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