Press Release: No Place Like Home by Brooke Berman
For Immediate Release
Contact: Samantha Choy
212-572-6027
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
A Memoir in 39 Apartments
By Brooke Berman
“Compelling, original, and a fascinating portrait of life among young artists in New York City, No Place Like Home will resonate with readers who are searching to discover their own true ‘home.’ That is, practically all of us.”
—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
“Brooke Berman’s voice is utterly distinct, and her book, detailing her nomadic artist’s journey toward both a successful playwriting career and a home of her own, through twenty years of cramped sublets, high-rise palaces, writers’ colonies, and boyfriends’ vans, is a hilarious, hopeful, and penetrating must-read.”
—Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Year of Yes
“Brooke Berman is the Real Deal: a miraculous, soul-seeking, honest artist who tells her story with humor, insight, and a deep and abiding respect for this journey we call life. No Place Like Home is a gift to artists and dreamers everywhere who yearn to find their place in the daunting world of art, commerce, and real estate.”
—Rebecca Walker, author of
Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence,
and Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
Young urbanites are forever in search of the holy trinity: a great apartment, a successful career, and true autonomy from family. In reality, they’re probably sleeping in windowless converted bedrooms, working long hours at jobs they hate, dating remarkably unsuitable people—if they’re dating at all—and fielding stressful calls from “home.” In a place like New York City, a prime apartment makes all the difference—because even if nothing else is working out, at least you have a place to call your own.
Award-winning playwright Brooke Berman moved to New York as a wide-eyed eighteen-year-old eager to make the big city her home. But in the twenty years and thirty-nine different apartments she inhabited along the way, she’s realized that “home” is much more than an address.
In NO PLACE LIKE HOME: A Memoir in 39 Apartments (Harmony Books; June 8, 2010), Berman uses her colorful experiences with various neighborhoods, sublets, landlords, and roommates to illuminate how each experience shaped her self-discovery as she struggled to stay afloat and fulfill her dream of a life in theater. Through both triumph (A place with a closet! A fellowship at Juilliard!) and tragedy (a dead-of-night attack by an intruder in her SoHo apartment), Brooke learns how to heal the past, let go of excess, and stay flexible in the search for stability.
On the journey, Brooke shares apartments with colorful characters, from the annoying vegan dancer who alphabetizes her cassette collection to the macrobiotic chef boyfriend who mocks her desire “to nest” to the good friend who, when diagnosed with cancer, unceremoniously evicts Brooke from their to-die-for loft. Things improve when she shares a fifth-floor walkup with a platonic male roommate seven years her junior. (“I am your domestic partner,” she tells him over shots of Irish whiskey.) Added to the mix is Marilyn: Brooke’s ailing mother in the Midwest who inspires Brooke (“You can do whatever you want with your life.”), admonishes her (“I don’t understand what you have against matching clothes or doorman buildings.”), and terrorizes her (“It’s your mother. I’m dying, pick up the phone.”).
But NO PLACE LIKE HOME is less a story of moving than a story of moving forward. It’s about finding one’s true path and committing to it, despite the obstacles. With each step, Brooke exhibits tenacity, courage, and spirit as she navigates the ups and downs of the housing market and her heart. And, eventually, her hard work pays off, as she finds, paradoxically, that the more she lets go, the easier it is to step into the future. Throughout the journey, she follows her bliss, figures out how to pay her rent, and holds on to her sanity as she creates a true home within.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME is a search for roots, rest, and dwelling. Through love affairs and road trips, psychic healers and Off-Off Broadway theaters, sublets and a fellowship at Juilliard, Brooke discovers her inner strength and her ability to adapt. With each apartment she inhabits, she learns that home is a place found within her heart.
Candid, funny, and thoughtful, NO PLACE LIKE HOME is at its heart a love story—about finding where you belong, and the romance of getting there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brooke Berman is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Originally trained as an actor and solo performer in the experimental theater, Brooke began performing her own work on the Lower East Side of Manhattan before receiving formal training in playwriting from the Juilliard School. Her play Hunting and Gathering, which premiered at Primary Stages, was named one of the Ten Best of 2008 by New York magazine.
Brooke attended Barnard College and is a graduate of The Juilliard School. No Place Like Home is her first book. She is currently looking for an apartment . . . in Los Angeles, with her fiancé.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
A Memoir in 39 Apartments
By Brooke Berman
Harmony Books
On-sale June 8, 2010
Price: $23.00 Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-307-58842-5
Visit www.brookeberman.net
