A winning mix of family drama and comedy crime caper... you may well find yourself reading it in one sitting.' HEAT Home Stretch” is a very Irish novel set in a rural town in Cork that spans from 1987-2019, following Connor, a closeted gay man who is the sole survivor of a tragedy that kills a bride and groom and their friends the day before their wedding. It borrows directly from Graham Norton’s own adolescence in a lot of ways but is mostly fictionalised.

I love The Graham Norton Show and ever since he released his first novel, I’ve been meaning to see if he writes as well as he performs. He does. He really does. So, Carol, must vacate the house and move in with her parents Moira, her judgmental mother and Dave, her quiet seemingly spacy father who only seems to do as he is told. How could this happen to her, especially at her age? From there, we look at the relationships between women - the mothers, daughters, friends, and step-children in the stories, leading towards a surprising conclusion. I really enjoy the writing of Graham Norton whether is be his biographies or perhaps more surprising his novels. The stories are well written, full of interesting characters and plenty of emotions. ‘Forever Home’ is another excellent read and I found it so difficult not to read from start to finish in one sitting. Sobar is an absolutely terrible name for a place where people go with the intention of getting drunk.

Norton said: "There was a time in my life when I thought I would never manage to write a novel, so to be publishing my fourth feels a little surreal and very special. Still, Forever Home is effortlessly readable – mainly thanks to its reliance on explanatory speech rather than descriptive prose – possessed of a super twist and full of rounded characters to keep close to your heart. This is a novel that examines grief and the different ways it effects people, it looks at how a multitude of secrets and lies can be extremely destructive and one of the main messages is acceptance of who or what you are. It’s easy to read and becomes very absorbing after a while. Its easy to read and becomes an absorbing story. It’s maybe predictable but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Ireland 1987: A small Irish community is preparing for the wedding of two of it's inhabitants. As the friends head home the night before the wedding, there is a car accident. Thee survive the crash but three are killed. Connor. the driver of the car, survives. But staying among the angry and mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame. He decides to go travelling. He eventually settles down in New York. But secrets and regrets have come to haunt those left behind and will not be silenced. Before long, Connor will have to face his past.

Okay, Martin is a monster. Probably a psychopath. The fact that he takes it upon himself to pursue Connor’s sister makes absolutely no sense. He could have been off in Dublin , laughing at how he got away with the whole thing, but instead he saddles himself with Ellen, so he can make them both miserable in a sham marriage. Why? Who is this supposed to be helping? It makes no sense. Home Stretch” is unapologetically Irish and portrays the quirks of Irish society flawlessly, possibly sometimes at the risk of alienating those not from the country. Carol Crottie, a divorced English teacher and mother of a grown son, grabs her second chance at happiness by moving in with Declan Barry, a man several years her senior. Declan's two children are cold and hostile toward Carol. Their mother abandoned them years ago, and they don't like the idea of Carol moving in and replacing their mother in Declan's affections. Skip forward years and Declan's children have left the nest. Declan himself is showing distinct signs of Alzheimer's and Carol quits her job to care for him. When events (set in motion by Declan's children) put Declan into a care facility, they heartlessly throw Carol out of the house and put it up for sale.SHAPIRO: It's not disclosures about the inner life. It is just a sort of, like, filling the air with sounds. SHAPIRO: And yet you were well into your career before you started writing fiction. When you began as an author, you started as a memoirist. What made you decide to make that move? When the sale is done and they go to the house, something just doesn't smell right. Carol and Moira find themselves in a horrible situation which they can't tell anyone about, especially Dave and have a mystery they have no idea how to solve.

This novel is a story about finding yourself and your place within this world, where you can exist easily within your own skin, without shame, regret, or longing. By the same token, it’s also a story about Ireland’s journey from intolerance through to progressive change and acceptance. This is done gently, alongside the main story, but reveals itself with significance. Home Stretch is a literary achievement that will appeal to fans of Irish fiction, both historical and contemporary. I loved it and will highly recommend it to all readers. I've been a fan of the Graham Norton Show for so long. This is my first novel by him and little did I know that he's a great writer as well! I love how his humor is shown throughout the entire book. I really hated the relationship between Ellen and her only daughter Aisling. It seemed so unnecessarily catty and spiteful, on the mother’s side! The fact that Ellen openly admits she does not even like her daughter is played for laughs or otherwise not seen as an issue but I couldn’t get over it. It seemed so vindictive of Ellen to dislike her daughter for being a young naive person.Look, I’m not going to spend much time on Connor, he was very damaged by being the victim of a sexual assault at the hands of Martin, followed by the whole taking the rap for the crash. The decisions he made were all because he was running from that and that made a kind of sense, although this is never really resolved. The big thing with Connor is that it is utterly ludicrous that he spent nearly 20 years as an Irish man in London and New York going out drinking regularly before bumping in to another Irish person who knew him or his family in some way shape or form. And he gets so excited when he discovers an Irish barman in New York, so it’s not like he’s been deliberately dodging them. I really enjoy the writing of Graham Norton both his autobiographies and more recently his excellent novels. His writing is so good and I have read all three of his novels and can highly recommend them.

SHAPIRO: ...What makes her so delightful - right? - is the - like, what are you doing here? Well, I guess you're here. With all the dramas that Carol has to go through (from small and tedious to horrific and chilling, or rather, freezing), with all the emotional bumps and bruises she suffers as she uncovers more and more of the dark and tragic past of her partner's family, this story is ultimately nothing but pure kindness and compassion, with a fair share of good-natured irony sprinkled here and there because come on, it's Graham Norton! :) heard great things about this author’s previous book so I was really excited to get an early copy of his new release. I figured the wit he shows during his interviews for his TV show would surely factor into the story and it definitely did. The reason why I didn’t rate this a 3 was because of one truly *awful* decision relating to Connor and a younger man he meets in a bar midway through the book. I won’t spoil, but the decision to put that in the novel was so ill advised and gross that it truly put me off the novel. NORTON: Well, she's kind of mine, too. And she changed the book, you know? She was the one who brought so much comedy 'cause she's just a funny woman. And so she turned something quite dark into a sort of dark romp, I would say.Carol lives in a small Irish town and finds a second chance at love with a much older man Declan. Declan's ex-wife left him and their children long ago and is still a mystery to all. The book begins with the town’s preparation for an upcoming wedding. Then, there’s a car crash and the aftermath involves secrets, lies, families ripped apart and in particular, the story of Connor who was driving the car. Minor criticisms aside, this is a very well written book and a very enjoyable read. Some really meaty characters to get you teeth into and some minor ones that are more of a distraction than adding anything really to the story. It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony, a group of young friends, including the bride and groom, are involved in an accident. Three survive. Three are killed.