Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by hayleybeale
Home Stretch by Graham Norton
2.0
Graham Norton is a hugely successful Irish comedian and actor, though I know him best from the snippets that turn up on my Facebook feed of his TV show where he interviews celebs from the entertainment industry. I have always found him to be warm, funny, and very likeable. It turns out he also writes fiction and The Home Stretch is his third. Though it’s a decent enough novel of families, choices, and decisions, I think I’ll stick with my Facebook snippets in future.
In 1987, in the rural Irish town of Mullinmore, a car crashes at speed into a ditch. Three of the six young occupants are killed outright and one is rushed to hospital in a coma. Two walk away with no injuries: Connor Hayes was the driver and, in shame, his family arranges for him to go and work construction in Liverpool. But Conner is a closeted gay man and once his building site coworkers find this out, he can no longer stay there. Martin Coulter, the other survivor and the handsome son of the town doctor, starts courting Conner’s older sister Ellen.
The novel then skips to 1995 and the action has moved on. This is one of my troubles with the novel; like a Greek tragedy all the action happens off stage. By the time we rejoin our characters, Conner is living as an openly gay man in London and Ellen is married to Martin with two children. We are told, rather skimpily, how this comes about but surely these liminal shifts should be what the novel focuses on?
There is one final time skip to 2012 (during which, once again, a lot happens but we only see the end result) and, in theory at least, everything we thought we knew turns out not to be true. Except, of course in practice, it sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb from very early on.
I found it hard to get to know the characters because so much of the development happens while we’re not in the room - they just emerge, changed, a few years later. There’s some interesting thoughts about the changing acceptance of homosexuality in Ireland which we see through Conner’s eyes and later his nephew’s, but we never actually see the way that tolerance emerges, it just changes from one time period to the next.
I’m not sure who this gently undemanding and perfectly pleasant fiction is intended for, perhaps bigger fans of Graham Norton than me.
Thanks to HarperVia and Netgalley for the digital review copy.
In 1987, in the rural Irish town of Mullinmore, a car crashes at speed into a ditch. Three of the six young occupants are killed outright and one is rushed to hospital in a coma. Two walk away with no injuries: Connor Hayes was the driver and, in shame, his family arranges for him to go and work construction in Liverpool. But Conner is a closeted gay man and once his building site coworkers find this out, he can no longer stay there. Martin Coulter, the other survivor and the handsome son of the town doctor, starts courting Conner’s older sister Ellen.
The novel then skips to 1995 and the action has moved on. This is one of my troubles with the novel; like a Greek tragedy all the action happens off stage. By the time we rejoin our characters, Conner is living as an openly gay man in London and Ellen is married to Martin with two children. We are told, rather skimpily, how this comes about but surely these liminal shifts should be what the novel focuses on?
There is one final time skip to 2012 (during which, once again, a lot happens but we only see the end result) and, in theory at least, everything we thought we knew turns out not to be true. Except, of course in practice, it sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb from very early on.
I found it hard to get to know the characters because so much of the development happens while we’re not in the room - they just emerge, changed, a few years later. There’s some interesting thoughts about the changing acceptance of homosexuality in Ireland which we see through Conner’s eyes and later his nephew’s, but we never actually see the way that tolerance emerges, it just changes from one time period to the next.
I’m not sure who this gently undemanding and perfectly pleasant fiction is intended for, perhaps bigger fans of Graham Norton than me.
Thanks to HarperVia and Netgalley for the digital review copy.