Graham Norton – A Keeper and Holding

There are so many books, and so many authors, that it is no wonder I am constantly surprised that, somehow, I missed knowing about a really good book until some years after it’s publication. That was the case with Graham Norton, until I read his most recent book Home Stretch.

After reading Home Stretch I read both of his earlier novels and recommend them to you.

Holding is a mystery novel – “Like a Miss Marple mystery written by Colm Toibin” says a New York Times writer. I’d add “with a sense of humour”.

Young Sergeant P.J. Collins is the policeman in a small Irish village where nothing much happens apart from the usual gossip and the odd misdemeanour. So, when a body is found on a building site, that was once a family farm, it is a great excitement. The fact that a young man went missing many years earlier just increases the speculation and attention.

We meet the village residents, including the two young women who had been in love with the missing man – one now a married mother of two, and the other a spinster living in the family home with two spinster sisters.

It seems that everyone has something to hide and something to fear.

A Keeper takes place in both Manhattan and Ireland. Elizabeth Keane is a single mother of a teenage son living in Manhattan when the death of her mother in Ireland takes her home to deal with the estate. Returning to Ireland, to her childhood home, is disconcerting. Those who stayed seem so much the same, while she has lived away for so long. What connection does she have to this place now that her mother is no longer alive? And who was her mother, really? Simply a woman who raised her daughter alone and lived a quiet and solitary life? 

Meeting with her mother’s lawyer to settle the estate, Elizabeth is surprised to discover that she has also inherited another property, in a place unknown to her. And that’s all you get. So much of the pleasure of reading this book was the discovery of the story as it unfolded, and I will not spoil that for you.

Graham Norton – terrific storyteller and writer!