Library's review
For all that it starts as a conventional family saga, A Keeper (2018) by Graham Norton takes a turn toward what I can only term Irish Gothic in its recounting of what really happened 40 years ago that ended with Patricia raising Elizabeth as a single parent. There are so many parallels among the generational stories: Patricia raising Elizabeth as a single mother; Elizabeth marrying and divorcing, leaving her to raise her own son, Zach, in a single-parent home; Zach’s own complicated romantic entanglements. Norton deftly juggles all three storylines without losing sight of the narrative’s focus. The answers may lie in the past with Patricia and Edward, but it is Elizabeth’s present and to a lesser extent Zach’s future that form the heart of the novel.
Norton is a skillful storyteller. I was immediately engrossed in Elizabeth’s life and shared her curiosity about what her mother had been hiding all those years. And I felt equally sympathetic and interested in Patricia’s story, such that the impatience I often feel when a novel switches from one timeline to another never materialized. The ending, while just a bit on the nose in its dénouement, was nonetheless satisfying. A keeper, indeed.
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Fiction. Literature. Mystery. HTML:From Graham Norton�??the BAFTA Award�??winning Irish television host and author of the "charming debut novel" (New York Journal of Books) Holding�??a masterly and haunting tale of secrets and ill-fated love follows a young woman as she returns to Ireland after her mother's death and unravels the identity of her father. When Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother's death, she's focused only on saying goodbye to that dark and dismal part of her life. Her childhood home is packed solid with useless junk, her mother's presence already fading. But within this mess, she discovers a small stash of letters�??and ultimately, the truth. Forty years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet except for the constant wind that encircles her as she hurries deeper into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. She has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on. With wistful and evocative prose, A Keeper is sure to appeal to "fans of sensitive character studies" (Publishers Weekly) and brilliantly illustrates Graham Norton's clear-eyed understanding of human nature and its da… (more)