Expressions of both individual psychology and grand family histories are easily found in the architecture of a past home. These two narratives are counterintuitive yet closely related. When a family invests in a house, apartment, or some shared space, its interiors, like one’s mind, can feel simultaneously claustrophobic and inexhaustibly complex, and revisiting a former home can bring up fraught confrontations with descendants and sentimentality.[…..]

It’s a rainy summer night in Guadalajara. Zooming through the dark, the jeep I’m riding in feels more like a powerboat as it leaves a black wake in the flooded streets. This ain’t no British rain – and thank God for that. (I’ve had enough drizzle for two lifetimes.) Palm fronds shake and the heavy rain suddenly turns to hail. The frothy water in the[…..]