“Now we’re all available all the time, but it used to be you wouldn’t see people for weeks,” he says.
Reassured that his latest book is wicked fun, he notes that dispensing with mobile phones and social media meant he could more easily spin a mysterious disappearance. “It’s a bit dark, isn’t it, a bit gothic, but hopefully not too brutal?” Norton asks. Without spoiling too much, let’s just say the sections set in the ‘70s take a pretty wild turn. Protagonist Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland from contemporary New York after the death of her estranged mother and uncovers a secret stash of letters that change everything. His second novel A Keeper, which follows the critical and popular success of his London Times bestseller Holding (2016), is a dual-narrative page-turner that draws on the bad old days. He barely recognises the country now, in a good way, post-marriage equality and winning abortion rights. The overbearing morality of the Catholic Church in rural County Cork in the ‘70s prolonged Norton’s stay in the closet, with his Protestant upbringing meaning he was doubly an outsider. “We spent a very long winter during our summer, living in his parents’ garage. In his tense and darkly comic new novel Norton casts a light on the relationship between mothers and daughters, and truth and self-preservation with unnerving effect.“I remember now,” he chuckles at his own forgetfulness while speaking over the phone as he waited for a train on a bustling Monday morning in the British capital. It seems there are secrets in Declan's past, strange rumours that were never confronted and suddenly the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance. His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home with its worn oak floors and elegant features and move back in with her parents.Ĭarol's mother is determined to get to the bottom of things, she won't see her daughter suffer in this way. When Declan becomes ill, things start to fall apart. The new relationship sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned them all those years ago? But the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer. A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging.
The new novel from bestselling author Graham Norton.Ĭarol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown.
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