Home Stretch
Ratings11
Average rating3.8
Shame and longing can flow through generations, but the secrets of the heart will not be buried for ever.It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony a group of young friends, including bride and groom, drive out to the beach. There is an accident. Three survive, but three are killed. The live of the families are shattered and the rifts between them are felt throughout the small town. Connor is one of the survivors. But staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame of having been the driver. He leaves the only place he knows for another life, taking his secrets with him. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, he makes a home - of sorts - for himself in New York. The city provides shelter and possibility for the displaced, somewhere Connor can forget his past and forge a new life. But the secrets, the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to confront his past.Graham Norton's powerful and timely novel of emigration and return demonstrates his keen understanding of the power of stigma and secrecy - with devastating results.
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This was absolutely fantastic! Graham Norton's books just keep getting stronger. After reading A Keeper by this author a few years back, I highly anticipated this new release. He did not disappoint!
Set in a small Irish town just outside of Cork, this story follows the aftermath of a tragic car accident in the town in the 1980s . This results in the death of three of the local teenagers and leaves one completely paralysed and wheelchair bound for the rest of her life. When Connor takes the blame for the car accident, he is outcast from his community and runs away. The rest of the novel follows the fall out of Connor's exile on the community in Ireland, the relatives he leaves behind, Connor himself and the next generation to follow.
Norton has perfected beautifully his stitching together of remote Irish sub culture with its emphasis on community ties and the importance of social status. He also wonderfully illustrates in this novel through Connor and his nephew Finbarr's experiences, the fraught history of homosexuality in Ireland. Norton as a proud gay Irish man, welcomes us warmly as the reader into the struggles of his own adolescent sexual identity in Ireland through the character of Connor and his confusion and fear of rejection from his family.
The characters in this novel were wonderfully nuanced and vivid, seeming to walk right off the page. I have also come to admire deeply Norton's unique composition of his plots. He effortlessly weaves together family saga, historical drama and contemporary romance all into one compulsive and propelling read. Bravo Norton. I can say with pleasure, I am a firm fan. I cannot wait to read more from this author.
Thanks to the author, Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.
