Finding Home Again: A Profound Review of Richa Sharma’s Debut Novel
Richa Sharma’s debut, Finding Home Again, is a poignant exploration of belonging. Read Gargi Kalita‘s full review to discover this new book’s emotional depth.
“Sometimes home isn’t a place you return to, it’s a fragment of yourself you learn to sit with.”- This quiet, piercing observation finds its reflection throughout Richa Sharma’s Finding Home Again: Our Quest to Belong, lingering like an afterthought that refuses to leave. Sharma’s debut does not hand its readers a map of answers; instead, it invites them to walk with its characters through a maze of questions – Who am I when no place feels like mine? Where do I belong when I cannot even belong to myself?
The story unfolds through the lives of Kranti, Mridula, and Maya—three well-educated urbanites whose paths cross in the wake of a devastating train derailment in flood-stricken Assam. But what they truly confront is not merely the twisted metal or drowned tracks left behind by disaster , it is the quieter, more haunting wreckage of their own fragmented selves. Caught in what philosophers might call a liminal state—that unsettling space between what was and what could be, they drift between roles of parent, child, companions, and survivor, yet never fully inhabit any. Beneath their composed exteriors, each quietly battles restlessness, anxiety, and a hollow yearning for a home that cannot be traced on a map. The home they seek is metaphysical: a sense of belonging, of being claimed by life, of finally being enough.
The narrative resists the comfort of a straight path. It drifts like memory—back and forth between Maajorghat’s fractured bridge, Kranti’s suffocating childhood home, Mridula’s quiet survival as a divorced mother , and Maya’s grief-stricken recollections of a childhood where she mistook herself for the cause of her mother’s suffering. These are not grand, heroic struggles but the kind of quiet wars many wage daily, invisibly. In one of the book’s most haunting exchanges, Maya’s character responds to the question of home with raw honesty: “I don’t have any. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere. All the cities and towns I have lived in are my home—and aren’t, too.” It is in moments like this that Sharma’s writing pierces through the page, exposing the unspoken ache of displacement, a theme deeply familiar to anyone who has lived between places, languages, or selves.
What makes this search even more compelling is Sharma’s deliberate choice of setting. Though she is based in Hyderabad, she crafts the fictional Maajorghat and Sigo Dolung with rare sensitivity, portraying the Northeast not as an exotic other or a distant periphery but as a living, grieving entity. The landscape itself seems to absorb the characters’ turmoil, reflecting their inner chaos through its floods, silences, and fractures. This is not a mere backdrop but a mirror—what Homi Bhabha defines as the “unhomely,” a space where belonging and estrangement collapse into each other, blurring the lines between external devastation and internal disarray. In doing so, Sharma turns the land into an active participant in the narrative, deepening the emotional and philosophical weight of her story.
Sharma structures the novel in eleven sections, each introduced by a short, poetic prelude—meditations that serve as invitations to pause and feel before entering the emotional current of the chapters. One reads: “It was the wall that wronged you, but you blamed the window for an airless evening. If you would have stepped out, or just unbolted the glass and looked around, you would have known that the sky was gearing up for you.” These are not ornamental flourishes but quiet acts of framing, lending the narrative a rhythm closer to reflection than mere storytelling. Her language throughout carries the intimacy of poetry, transforming even fleeting moments into lyrical meditations, making the novel feel as much like an experience as a story.
What stands out most is Sharma’s refusal to offer neat resolutions. Even when the characters’ paths cross—Kranti searching for Mridula, Mridula for her ex-husband, Maya for her missing parents—their meetings don’t magically fix anything. They find moments of recognition, not rescue. Love appears in small, tentative ways, but it does not solve their loneliness or give them a permanent sense of belonging. As one character admits, “Maybe this feeling of home is a myth too… like the feeling of fulfilment.” In an age where fiction often bends toward happy endings, Sharma offers something far more daring—the raw texture of life itself, unpolished and unresolved.
This openness in the ending mirrors the way grief and memory work in real life. As trauma theorist Cathy Caruth notes, trauma doesn’t follow a straight path to healing—it loops back, returning when we least expect it. Sharma’s fragmented, looping narrative reflects this truth, blurring past and present, allowing emotions to surface in unpredictable ways. The novel isn’t about becoming whole; it’s about learning to live alongside one’s broken pieces. And yet, amid the fragmentation, there are moments of striking clarity, like a lantern in the dark—reminding us that belonging is not a place we arrive at, but a question that keeps us moving.
Finding Home Again is as much about individual pain as it is about collective experience. It captures the subtle but pervasive dislocation many Indians feel within their own country, where moving for work, study, or marriage often leaves people emotionally unmoored, existing everywhere but never fully rooted. It gives language to the modern condition of being—educated, urban, connected, yet profoundly lonely.
This is not a book that offers answers. It does not tell us that love or faith or a return to our roots will save us. Instead, it dares to sit with us in our restlessness, to acknowledge the questions we avoid asking in daylight. In doing so, it offers something rare: a mirror. A mirror to our own fragmented selves, to the endless quest for meaning and belonging in a world that feels increasingly untethered. Richa Sharma writes like someone who knows that healing is not a destination but a practice of coexisting with our scars. And in this way, Finding Home Again itself becomes a kind of home—not a place of comfort, but of recognition. It is a book for anyone who has ever felt unmoored, for anyone who has stared into their own life and wondered where, or with whom, they truly belong.
Book Details:
- Title: Finding Home Again: Our Quest to Belong
- Author: Richa Sharma
- Publisher: Nu Voice Press
- Release Date: 24 May 2025
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 332 pages
- ISBN: 978-8198418944
- Price: Rs 349
- Publisher & Packer: Penguin Random House India Pvt Ltd
- Where to buy: https://www.amazon.in/Finding-Home-Again-Our-Quest-Belong/
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