A Keeper: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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Living in America has left a void in Elizabeth as she tries to interact with her extended Irish family. She comes across some handwritten letters to her mother from a man by the name of Edward Foley in Cork. Elizabeth is perplexed as to the nature of these letters. Perfectly crafted, a beautiful, gripping account of Irish memory and deceit. A terrific achievement .' ANDREW O'HAGAN I raved about Holding two years ago ... A Keeper is even better. A powerful, very sad story, beautiful writing, two time frames that are perfectly balanced. Outstanding. Will easily be one of my books of 2018.' JOHN BOYNE I tend to wait at least a day after finishing a book to post a review, but I am highly annoyed right now and just want to put this book behind me. I maybe at one point while reading this ARC said are you serious and then started muttering to myself about just DNFing it. I don't like to do that with NetGalley reads though, so I may have to rethink on that in the future. This book was all over the place. I thought I was sitting down to read a solid mystery about a woman returning (Elizabeth) to her hometown in Ireland and finding out about her mother's (Patricia) past. Instead we don't really find out about it, we hear bits and pieces via other inconsequential secondary characters. The author throwing Patrica's POV in did nothing to help things. The plot with Elizabeth's son came out of nowhere and just made zero sense. Maybe if Norton actually spent time building up any of these characters I would have cared more. The writing was not very good I found. I just think that there were too many things happening and that Norton didn't make sure that both POVs worked well. Maybe if there was no Patricia POV that would have helped flesh out Elizabeth's POV more. The book then could have been more reliant on the mystery aspect. I thought that whole thing fizzled out. Elizabeth finds out about things and just does nothing. I just had to shake my head on all of that effort to tell this story for no big pay off.

Now”: Only child Elizabeth Keane, a 44-year-old college instructor, divorcée and mother to 17-year-old Zach, living in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, travels to Ireland to finalize her recently deceased mother’s estate in Buncarragh. She finds a hidden box of letters filled with clues about the father she never knew. A Keeper has the vibes of Misery by Stephen King in some respects. What begins as a mother/daughter relationship novel will soon take on a much, much darker theme. And that, Boys and Girls, is a delightful plum pudding.

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Following her mother’s death home in Ireland, Elizabeth travels to Buncarragh where she has inherited her childhood home. Everything starts to go wrong when she discovers rats in the empty house & then her son goes missing somewhere in the States. Meanwhile she is told that she has also inherited another house, by the sea, which had belonged to her father whom she had never known. After enjoying the TV drama, “holding,” based on Graham Norton’s first book, I was pleased to discover his writing has continued. A Keeper does not have the humour of his first story, but it does give a clear picture of rural Irish life contrasted with the heroine’s present life in New York. Elizabeth Keane’s life is not exciting, but she is happy with her job as a university lecturer bringing up her 17-year-old son, Zach, on her own, after a divorce several years earlier. The book's setting is Ireland in the present and the 1970s. Maybe I have been reading too much Tana French and Maeve Binchy, but the book didn't feel "Irish" to me. Even Elizabeth didn't. Maybe because she had been away for so long, but there's no mention of her having an accent or how her relatives sound, etc. We get descriptions of the house and farm and that's it. The flow was not great. The POVs between Patricia and Elizabeth and the mini POVs for Edward and Rosemary just didn't hang together well. A gripping, thoughtful tale about the search for identity, belonging and self-possession.' OBSERVER

Graham Norton has been on TV for years in the UK. He is a comedian who regularly host a chat show and the Eurovision Song Contest. This is his second novel. His first novel I loved so when I seen he had this new novel coming out, I just had to get myself a copy. It's set in Buncarragh, Ireland. The duel storylines gel well together. It's only while you are reading the book, you realise the significance of its title. A story of missed chances, love and loss. A well written book that at one point, i did find a bit far fetched. I did enjoy his first novel, Holding, a bit more than I did this novel. But I will be looking forward to reading more from this Graham Norton in the future. years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet but for the tireless wind that circles her as she hurries further into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. She has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on. The next chapter is the "Now" and we meet a young single mom who has just learned her mom has passed. She needs to go to Ireland and clear out her house and wind up her affairs. She is dealing w/the loss of her mom and also with her teen son, whose situation is complicated because she is raising him alone. The rooms weren’t empty, they were filled with the absence of someone. The dead don’t vanish, they leave a negative of themselves stamped on the world.’ Graham Norton has won 9 BAFTAs for Best Entertainment Performance, and Best Entertainment Programme. He presents The Graham Norton Show on BBC1, a show on BBC Radio 2 every Saturday, and is a judge on RuPaul's Drag Race UK. Norton won the Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards in 2017.

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I know this is Norton's second novel (his first was soo much better!), but he really left a lot to be desired in this book. Maybe he needs a better editor as well, as there were so many points that could have used further explanation while working on the timeline.

It's a sad and lovely book, brimful of tenderness and compassion, where the revelations of the past upturn the perceptions of the present.' SUNDAY EXPRESS Graham Norton is one of the UK's most treasured comedians and presenters. Born in Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin, Norton's first big TV appearance was as Father Noel Furlong on Channel 4's Father Ted in the early 1990s. He then secured a prime time slot on Channel 4 with his chat shows So Graham Norton and V Graham Norton. one of the more authentic debuts I've read in recent years ... in such an understated manner, eschewing linguistic eccentricity ... in favour of genuine characters and tender feeling ... this is a fine novel ' John Boyne, Irish TimesIf you haven’t yet read a Graham Norton novel, do yourself a favour and hop to it. He’s a brilliant writer and each of his novels are so different from each other, yet instantly recognisable as his work, offering a reading experience that is both a comfort and good for your soul. The story of a daughter returning to Ireland and discovering her identity is moving, but even more so is the story of her mother, who, now dead, brought up Elizabeth on her own in the society where single mothers were not accepted with open hands. Patricia defied the conventions and devoted her life to her daughter. No spoilers here, but the plot is intriguing, and the truth revealed proves that life sometimes prepares for us most extraordinary surprises, just like for Elizabeth. This compelling new novel confirms Graham Norton's status as a fresh, literary voice, bringing his clear-eyed understanding of human nature and its darkest flaws.