I listened to Graham Norton read his book on Audible, which added the Irish voice to the experience. This is Norton’s third novel set in Ireland. This is a story about the damage done by lies and misdirection. How lives can be irrevocably changed in the split second it takes for a car to lose control and crash.
He’s a skilled storyteller, weaving his narrative over different time frames. I thoroughly enjoyed Home Stretch, finding myself invested in the lives of the characters. Highly recommended.

You would have to live under a rock not to recognise the name Graham Norton from his popular UK talk show. When this novel was published several years ago, I thought “I don’t think so!” Well, more fool me for making such a rude assumption.

Holding is set in a small remote village in Ireland. It’s the sort of place where everyone knows everyone and their business. On the surface, all appears pretty boring and routine, until human remains are unearthed on an old farm. With the discovery of these bones, memories are stirred and old hurts and grievances rekindled. Although this is a contemporary novel, there is a sense of time having slowed in the village of Duneen, with few concessions to the 21st century embraced.

The town guard, Sergeant PJ Collins, is considered by many in the community as a bit of a joke. At 53 years of age he has never had a real relationship, lives alone at the police station and is so fat he struggles to fit behind his car steering wheel. There is little scope for police work in a tiny community like Duneen, until now. Working with Detective Superintendent Linus Dunne, sent from Cork to lead the investigation, PJ discovers a renewed sense of purpose and starts to earn the respect of the community.

Norton skilfully reveals a community’s worth of secrets and regrets. His insights are often painfully honesty: “Some marriages combust, others die, and some just lie down like a wounded animal, defeated.”

This is a cleverly constructed murder mystery. But it’s more than that. Norton has successfully created a (small) world, populated by real people, not just characters, who struggle with the results of past indiscretions, but who also grow and are enabled to look to a future with hope.

I read Norton’s second novel, A Keeper, before Holding (see my review on Goodreads), which is also written with empathy and compassion. (They are separate stories, so it makes no difference what order you read them in.) I am waiting with keen anticipation for his next novel.

I must confess I did approach this novel with little expectation. In Australia, Graham Norton is known for his talk-show, which is not especially high-brow (although thoroughly entertaining!) So who would have expected him to be a really good writer?
A Keeper is really well written! It’s a ‘family saga’, and there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s well told.

Elizabeth Keane returns to her small hometown in Ireland after her mother’s death to sort out the family house in readiness for selling. She has a life in New York, albeit complicated by single-parenting a son on the cusp of adulthood. When Elizabeth discovers a bundle of letters, hidden in her mother’s wardrobe; love letters from the father Elizabeth never knew, she begins a search for the truth.
We then are taken back to discover Patricia’s story, and how she came to be a single mother to Elizabeth in a time and place where this was no easy task.
With apparent ease, Norton skilfully alternates Elizabeth’s current journey with the telling of her mother’s earlier story.

He has evoked a small Irish village, with all its prejudices and kindnesses, with skill and affection. His descriptions of the landscape and the extreme climate are visceral. The claustrophobic nature of living on an isolated farm is truly frightening.

Graham Norton has written a novel with a keen eye and empathy for human nature, be it benign or flawed. This is a cracking good yarn, with a satisfying ending.