Book Review: Graham Norton's Forever Home quickly dispels comfy notions

Graham Norton creates a claustrophobic world of intrusion and intrigue in the small fictional town of Ballytoor, in West Cork. Picture: Sophia Spring

• Forever Home
• Graham Norton
• Coronet, pb €10.99

There is a lovely type of cosiness around the phrase ‘forever home’, now appropriated by Graham Norton for his latest novel. But other words on the book’s cover negate any sense of security by posing the question, ‘where do secrets live?’.

Immediately positive ideas are dispelled because after Channel 4’s Brookside we are all familiar with the concept of the ‘body under the patio’, and after ITV’s cold case series Unforgotten, bodies defrosting in freezers have become run of the mill.

But what is that awful smell emanating from number 7, Stable Row, Ballytoor?

Norton’s previous publication, Home Stretch, is to some extent auto-fiction, concentrating as it does on a young man growing up gay under the restrictions of a society trammelled by strict adherence to the rule of the local priests.

While much of the exciting plot was imagined, the claustrophobic world of small-town Co Cork was faithfully rendered.

Norton pulls this off again with Forever Home as he describes the family and neighbours of his central character, Carol.

The fictional town of Ballytoor is small and nearly everyone went to the same school; the one where Carol teaches. She met her ex-husband, Alex, in the staffroom and taught the children of her current life-partner, Declan.

Gossip is rife as citizens discuss the personal affairs of their neighbours — and not in a nice way; judgements are made, and they are not generous. Pettiness and small-minded attitudes are infectious, and behaviour is controlled by anxious ‘what will the neighbours think?’ thoughts. 

This does not mean that the characters do not transgress the mores of their community, it is more that they feel guilt, or try to cover up their actions, or even move out of town to pursue their desires.

No one knows where Joan Barry went when she deserted her husband, Declan, and offspring, Killian and Sally. Did she sneak out of the home while Declan served customers at his pharmacy, or was there an almighty row ending with slammed doors? Has Joan left the stultifying atmosphere of Ballytoor for freedom across-the-water or is she shacked up somewhere in Dublin?

Secrets are uncomfortable notions but, when Declan sinks into early-onset dementia, the answers to the questions on everyone’s lips disappear into the grey, murky maelstrom of his consciousness.

At first Killian and Sally seem to be nasty pieces of work; cold towards Carol as if she were the evil stepmother in a fairy story. They start erasing her from their family and ignoring the fact that their father loved and cherished her.

Then Norton skilfully interweaves some sections of narrative from the points of view of these, now adult, children. Both have memories of hurt feelings and now that they have their own lives, they no longer have time or energy for the woman who lived with their father in the family home for 12 years.

Carol usurped the space previously occupied by their mother, and she and their father transformed the house, reconfiguring the rooms to suit themselves.

Neither Killian nor Sally find they’re content and they are only too willing to trace their misery back to the effect that Carol had on their childhood routines.

Norton creates an iconic Irish mammy in the redoubtable person of Moira, Carol’s mother. She is like a single-soldier army whose quick mind allows her to manipulate everyone. Everything bows down to the onslaught of her energy, be it the ironing, a locked padlock, or an unwilling interlocutor.

With her in the frame it cannot be long before number 7, Stable Row reveals its long hidden secrets.