I feel that the reading success of this novel really depends on the reader’s mood. This is a nostalgic, lyrical, sad but hopeful story about a family living in difficult times and circumstances. They do what they can, what they need to do, while still feeling the (sometimes invisible by the eye) bonds between them. Loneliness, isolation, fight, sadness - and hope.
Also I think thus is a novel suitable for the winter reading.

Personally, I found it hard to fully immerse myself in this book precisely because I am not in the reflective mood presently. But I recognize the poetic, beautiful writing and the sharp and vivid descriptions of all the feelings and environment.

I absolutely love Emma Hooper's writing. The whole book seemed to have an almost musical or lyrical quality and I was immersed in the lives of the Conners and their town Big Running. I was so taken with all of the characters, the story and the setting. I would love to read more of Emma's work and will be highly recommending this to everyone.

Beautifully written, atmospheric and poetic and basically just lovely. I flew through this tale of a "dried" up fishing town and it's main residents that won't give up on it. This was a wonderful book to read during the long days of winter.

I was unable to complete this book and therefore cannot publish the review on social websites. I saw rave reviews of it everywhere and I think most people would be intrigued by the setup.
The writing and the storyline did not hook me but was definitely something unique.

A family drama that weaves together the 4 stories of each family member and a view of their part in their family.

Our Homesick Songs
by Emma Hooper

To be fair, there is almost no reason why you need to hear from me that you should read this book, especially since I am embarrassingly late on my review. (though I did put a note on Goodreads). I am not the first person to mention the lyrical writing, so yes, I am using this tired word but please don’t be turned off by it. According to my thesaurus, I could also call it deeply felt, passionate, expressive, and emotional, and any one of these words would also fit perfectly, but you might consider me a bit over the top. But honestly, I wouldn’t be. This book will rip your heart out and then, give it gently back to you. (How is that even possible? I don’t know.) You will cry before you are even halfway through, as if it’s a Fredrik Backman book, because you will know that bad things are going to happen and nobody is going to be happy. But you will go on anyway, because you are a reader, and you are brave, and you will hope for a happy ending in spite of all that. And you will learn something. (About the Cod fishing industry in Newfoundland, and its collapse in 1992.) And then, in the end, you will agree with me. There was no reason you needed my review to understand the beauty of this book.


I posted this to Goodreads when I first read it, but didn’t get to go back to review it for a while:
I will review this once I stop crying. Honestly, it was not ugly crying, but more like the kind that starts creeping up on you about halfway through the book, and you just start feeling heartsick, and you know it's not going to get any better. Despite this, it was a perfect ending. More later. You really don't need me to tell you, though, just read it for yourself.


For Goodreads:

Why I picked it — Because I loved Etta and Otto and Russell and James
Reminded me of… For some reason, this book reminded me of The Pearl Diver, by Jeff Talarigo. Very different themes, but similar feelings of loss and isolation.
For my full review — click here

The historical background of Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper is not explained in the book but is important to understanding the story. I appreciated the story more after researching the background of the fishing industry in Newfoundland, Canada. Without the background, I don't understand the "why" of this story. The imagery is vivid. I can "see" the isolation, the sea, the grey skies, and the cold. That is the lasting memory of this book for me.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2019/02/our-homesick-songs.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

The novel sees the Connor family between decades - alternating between the present of 1992 and the past of the 70s when Aiden and Martha met.

Lyrical, soft and beautiful, Emma Hooper uses the art of language to convey and portray. She decipher human emotion through the simple but powerful tool of language in a really stunning way.

But language is not all that this novel has. There is also the sharp character portrayal and development accompanied by a tender story. Once idyllic and home to many fish workers, the 1992 sees the Big Running village coping not only with the loss of fish - but with the pending loss of home of so many people. Faced with finding work elsewhere to support their family, Martha and Aiden further drift away from one another while their two children - Cora and Finn face their own challenges of coming-of-age and growing up.

There is loss and sadness, but the tone of hope is so present. There is hope for the Conners even if they don't see it yet. And hope and love is what holds them together.

I have kindly received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and Simon & Schuster in exchange of a fair review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Love, love, loved this book. Atmospheric and such depth of feeling. Read it!

"There was nothing to do but tell stories. Tell this story."

OUR HOMESICK SONGS by Emma Hooper is a beautiful, haunting, lyrical tale about a fading town in Newfoundland and a boy who would do anything to save his family.
In 1992 the fish vanish from the waters due to overfishing by huge super-trawlers from foreign lands, causing the cod industry to abruptly collapse. With the closure of the fish plants, jobs disappear and the people from the town of Big Running are forced to leave the island and go west in search of work.
I like the Connor family, thirty-eight-year-old Aidan, who cleans and cooks, thirty-seven-year-old Martha, who makes nets, fourteen-year-old Cora and adorable ten-year-old Finn, who reminds me of my nephew when he was ten.
Finn Connor suddenly finds himself living in a ghost town. There is no school, no friends, the library boat and whole rows of houses are abandoned. Then Finn's parents announce that in order for their family to survive they must take turns working in the oil fields of Alberta.
Finn still has his sister, Cora, with whom he counts the lights of dwindling boats on the water at night, and in nearby Little Running, Mrs. Callaghan, who teaches him how to play ancient melodies of their native Ireland on his accordion, and tells him folktales about Ireland, stories about mermaids, and the story of his parents' childhood and their romance.
I love how Cora secretly transforms each abandoned house to represent the different countries in the old "Happy Backpacker Guides" she takes from the library boat. Then she disappears.
Finn must find a way of calling home the family and the life he has lost. I admire Finn's hopeful determination and dedication in developing and busying himself with his plans to save his family.
I highly recommend this unforgettable novel. 5 singing stars ⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️

Thanks to author, Emma Hooper for writing this beautiful, haunting, unforgettable, lyrical tale. And thanks to Simon & Shuster Publishers and NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC of this novel enabling me to read it and write an unbiased review.

Posted on
Goodreads January 21, 2019

Mixing the oddities of Claudia Dey's Heartbreaker with the family drama and complications of Paula Hawkins' Into the Water with experimental twists of prose, Emma Hopper put together an intoxicating glimpse at the hardships of a fishing village in rural East Canada. The book flips between the dire present (1993) Finn is trying to save and his sister Cora is trying to find her place in, and their parents' past (1960s-70s) as told by a witch-like neighbor and music teacher. All throughout is a musical thread of mermaids and folk songs to drive the story home. The style took quite a while to get used to though the more I read the more hooked I became, gobbling up every page through to the end.

As a huge fan of the author's first novel, I was delighted to request and receive Emma Hooper's sophomore offering. Our Homesick Songs had a fairy-tale quality throughout, which readers of magical realism will enjoy. While this reader had difficulty feeling connected to the characters and the story, certainly many customers will appreciate this book.

What a beautiful story. I loved the simple, almost spare writing style. It reminds me of Lime Creek by Joe Henry, one of my favorite books. I identified so much with the characters and their hardships. I felt connected to them--and even to Canada! This is one of those books that really pulls you in and makes you feel like you are right there with the family, suffering and loving and struggling with them. I really enjoyed it.

A gentle, moving story about the demise of a Newfoundland fishing community and the stresses the loss of their traditional livelihood had on families who had made their living for generations by fishing there.

Our Homesick Songs alternates between two years, 1974 and 1992/3. The latter is significant because 1992 was the year in which the Canadian government suspended cod fishing off the Newfoundland coast. The big factory ships had decimated stocks, as they also did in Scotland, and they needed time to recover. Aidan Connor and Martha Murphy fell in love in 1974. In 1992, their relationship was strained by the necessity of working away from home in alternate months from each other. Their children, Finn and Cora, reacted in different ways to the problems facing their community and their parents, with both trying to find their own way to help the family and their community to survive.

Old folk songs and folk memories are interwoven into the story hence the title of the book. Whilst addressing serious issues, it’s a warming tale of relationships and of the power of music to create a bond between people. I really enjoyed it.

One of the themes of this book is the interesting question: “Can things that are lost be found?” The answer, of course is, “ sometimes.” Emma Hooper explores this question in many different sub-stories in this rather complex novel. Marriages are strained by absence. Teens run away. Species die off, and with them the livelihood of a community. People leave their homes when their livelihood is gone. Loved ones die.

I enjoyed this tale of Newfoundland on the edge of change. The music of the islands is echoed in the musicality of Hooper’s prose.


I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Remember the saying "plenty of fish in the sea" which can be used to signify you've got plenty of choices? These days, plenty of fish in the sea is a thing of the past.

Our Homesick Songs is a very atmospheric novel, about a fishing village slowly dying due to not enough fish in the sea.

I'm torn on my rating. I appreciated many things about this little novel - the writing is competent, beautiful at times. Regardless, I just couldn't get into the story, I was kept at a distance either by the writing style and/or the story itself - my brain was telling me that it was a good novel, but my heart wasn't really in it. It could easily be a timing thing. This was a very slow novel, which is not something that normally bothers me, still, in this case, I felt the story was dragging and I found myself not wanting to get back to it.

While this novel didn't thrill me a great deal, I am willing to read more by Emma Hooper in the future.

I was not abe to connect with this book or the characters. The dialogue, the poetic language, the characters, the lyricism....none of it was to my taste and I found myself skimming. For the right reader there is much to like, but I am not that reader.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. I will not be leaving a review on social media since this was a case of the wrong reader for this book. Those who like character-driven novels and lyrical mystical writing will find this book a better fit.

Ahhh... I think I'm in love! Someone get me all the Emma Hooper books in the world, because I am so enamored with this sweet, adorable book - so lyrical and poetic and just enchanting. The characters are so quirky, the writing is fun and it reads like a fairytale.

Set in Canada, in a fishing village, the Connor family is one of the last families left in their town on the island of Newfoundland. The Cod has been over fished and there is just nothing left to catch to make a living. It's forced most of the residents to leave for work, uproot their entire families and the only lives they know as fishing families, and seek employment elsewhere. Aidan and Martha have lived there their whole lives, together since teenagers. They swap working off island - a month for him, a month for her, to leave for work, separated entirely from each other - but as to not disturb the lives of their two children, Cora and Finn. Cora wants off the island. She longs for friends, and schools full of children and streets of houses packed full of happily, employed families. Finn just wants the fish to come back, and he's determined to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

We follow some of their stories in the past - of the islanders and their families, and how Aidan and Martha met and fell in love - a fairytale of a love story in itself. Our Homesick Songs is peppered with folklore and songs of the island and there's a little bit of magic in every chapter. I loved following Finn and Cora's adventures, both filled with creativity, wonder and intense determination, as well as their parents, their love, loyalty, and bouts of weakness and indiscretion.

The descriptions of the island, it's shores and waters, and giant icebergs are gorgeous and you'll fall in love with every character. The snippets of folklore, and fishing tales are quirky, and heartwarming, including the tale Finn's accordion teacher tells him of sailors singing songs when they've been on the water too long and start to forget their families... the homesick songs, they're called.

I cherished every minute of this book and I delighted in it's refreshing character and uniqueness. And now I'm off to buy the rest of Emma's books.

To be honest I requested Our Homesick Songs on the basis of a great cover and because Hooper was my Nan’s maiden name. I am so glad that I did, it is wonderful story, so subtle and lyrically written. I loved it!

Aiden and Martha and their two children Cora and Finn come alive in Hooper’s writing, their past, their present, their hopes and their fears. The depiction of their life, and quest to survive, in a virtual ghost town where the fishing industry has collapsed is compelling. I found myself heading to Google to learn that in the mid1990s there was massive social and economic dislocation in Newfoundland due to overfishing. The ‘government program’ to relocate the islands was fact not fiction! This was not something I had ever heard about before but the environmental impact is a subtle message underpinning the family’s story.

It is split narrative – moving between Aiden and Martha’s youth and Cora and Finn’s story. Each family member is, in their own way, trying to hold the family and their lifestyle together. And then there’s Cora’s redecorating project where she transfoms abandoned homes into a virtual atlas/travelogue. I loved that Tasmania got a mention although there wasn’t a description of the result! I like to think it was a deliberate inclusion because Tasmania is also a small island off the mainland.

A great cover for a superb novel. Highly recommended.

This just wasn't the right book for me. I was marginally more interested in the story of Finn and Cora than that of their parents, but ultimately I didn't connect with this book and I abandoned it. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.