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A Novel
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وصف الناشر
“Wonderful. . . . Dark, funny, full of emotional intelligence and gripping from the start . . . beautifully written.”—Daily Mail
The internationally bestselling author and host of The Graham Norton Show returns with a tense and darkly comic novel that casts a caustic light on the relationship between mothers and daughters and truth and self-preservation.
Where do secrets live?
Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown. A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging—and sparks a flurry of speculation. What does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned him and his children all those years ago? Carol and Declan know their relationship is the talk of the town, but the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer.
When Declan becomes ill, their relationship falters. 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 with her parents.
Carol’s mother is determined to get to the bottom of things—she won't see her daughter suffer this way. It seems there are secrets in Declan's past, strange rumors that were never confronted, and suddenly the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance that affects them all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Norton (Home Stretch) misses the mark in this blend of emotional family saga and questionable crime cover-up set in seaside Ireland. Divorced English teacher Carol Crottie, 48, found second love with Declan Barry, the father of one of her students, 10 years ago. Declan's early-onset dementia leads his two children—unhappily isolated Sally and greedy, self-serving Killian—to pack him off to a nursing home and sell his beloved house in fictional Ballytoor. Carol's parents, owners of a successful café chain, use a shell company to secretly buy the house from Sally and Killian, but then Carol and her imposing mother, Moira, discover a body in a basement freezer. They assume it's the corpse of Joan, Declan's wife, who'd left suddenly years before. When Joan shows up and clearly knows more than she's telling, Moira concocts a series of schemes to get to the truth and avoid alerting the police, ostensibly to spare Declan from charges he can't defend. The family dramas, from Killian's unease with becoming a father with his husband to Carol's regression to adolescent frustration in the face of her parents' steamrollering, are evocatively rendered, but the oddly downplayed central traumas clash with the mildly humorous tone. Despite its zany plot, this is more limp than madcap.
