A Keeper: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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Everything that happens to Elizabeth deepens her understanding of motherhood even though her life is turned upside down. Of course, she is not there for guidance so she turns to her divorced husband to step in and be a father, something he has done little of before this. Compelling, well-written with a great eye for human foibles it is undoubtedly highly readable but for me lacked substance and there isn’t much more to the novel than what becomes pretty obvious early on.

This is the 2nd novel I have read by Graham Norton and once again I am so impressed with his writing. Finding that she has time on her own she decides to delve into her mother's past and the book switches between Elizabeth and Patrica's stories respectively.

Graham Norton’s follow-up to his hugely impressive debut novel, Holding, is a bleak family drama set across a parallel narrative forty years apart. Norton cleverly mirrors the process of grieving in Patricia and Elizabeth’s stories, as the two women each mourn the passing of their mother. 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.

The next chapter is the "Now" and we meet a young single mom who has just learned her mom has passed. The main story line gives you a few gut punches, making you wonder how Patricia will get out of her circumstances. 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. Maybe I have been reading too much Tana French and Maeve Binchy, but the book didn't feel "Irish" to me. There wasn’t a single character here I didn’t like, or at least sympathize with (including Edward’s deranged mother Catherine) and I loved the setting.I cannot say much here it would ruin the story ,very sad thread in it and a desperate act that tore lives apart. That things take a far darker turn is obvious but just how far-fetched they become was a disappointment. She receives a reply from one Edward Foley of Castle House, and what unfolds reminded me often of Stephen King’s ‘Misery’ - without the gore.