Name: You can't go home again
ISBN: 9780140065770

You can't go home again

George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home. He begins a search for his own identity that takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of expatriates; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. At last Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.

What Hacker News says

okareamanJun 2021

I remember being like you describe at your age. Everyone in this is thread is saying great things and I don't need to repeat them, so I'll mention something different that helped me. That was literature. Books and plays like "Notes From The Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, "You Can't Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe, "Long Day's Journey Into Night" by Eugene O'Neill and "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder. What you are feeling is not unique and it will pass, so don't think you will feel this way forever and consequently do yourself harm. Welcome to the human condition. That's what the books and plays said to me.

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acheronJul 2015

"In Tolkien, everyone’s in their place and happy to be there. We go there and back, to where we started. There’s no escape, nothing will ever change and nobody will ever break out of this well-ordered world."

Apparently his copy of Return of the King had all the pages after Aragorn's coronation torn out? I wouldn't go as far as to say something along the lines of "you can't go home again" is the main theme of the book, but it's a pretty strong one (and based on Tolkien's experience in and after WWI). "Nothing ever changes" is about the opposite of what happens.

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