A Keeper: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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The house is in dilapidated state and more worryingly, infested with rats which scuppers Elizabeth's plan for residing there for the short duration of her stay. Maybe he needs a better editor as well, as there were so many points that could have used further explanation while working on the timeline. Graham's writing is effortless; his Irish roots are very much evident and he uses that to his advantage. years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet but for the tireless wind that circles her as she hurries further into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. Compelling, well-written with a great eye for human foibles it is undoubtedly highly readable but for me lacked substance and there isn’t much more to the novel than what becomes pretty obvious early on.

I love Graham Norton's writing and I would have read it in one sitting if I could, but I needed some sleep in between. In clearing out her mother's wardrobe Elizabeth comes across a wooden box containing letters from her father whom she knows very little about.It’s a sad and lovely book, brimful of tenderness and compassion, where the revelations of the past upturn the perceptions of the present. We certainly didn't see it coming and when it arrives it will knock the chair right out from under you. Stumbling across a small wooden box of letters penned to her mother in the early Seventies in response to a lonely hearts advert by the man she has been told is her father it provides her first opportunity to learn more about Edward Foley. The snarky ex-husband didn't go over well either and actually just disappeared out of the end of the story, never to be heard from again. The story is tight, the writing is sensitive, the plot is gripping - this book has all the elements of a great read.

The next chapter is the "Now" and we meet a young single mom who has just learned her mom has passed. Everything that happens to Elizabeth deepens her understanding of motherhood even though her life is turned upside down. There was a creepy ‘Rebecca’ feel to Patricia’s sections, the isolated house perched alongside a ruined castle on the wild coast – Ireland, not Cornwall, but still – a strange man, a crazed old woman, and secrets galore! Then”: 32-year-old “spinster,” Patricia Keane, having cared for her ailing mother for 14 years, places a “Lonely Heart” ad seeking male companionship after her mother finally dies.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The main story line gives you a few gut punches, making you wonder how Patricia will get out of her circumstances.

Maybe I have been reading too much Tana French and Maeve Binchy, but the book didn't feel "Irish" to me. A few of the characters Elizabeth talks to regarding her mother and family history are really kind of jerks. This is a fabulous little book and I read it from start to finish in one sitting wanting to know more.As for Elizabeth, “back in New York, she had felt guilty for not missing her mother more, but in this house she felt her absence like a physical ache”. No spoilers here, but the plot is intriguing, and the truth revealed proves that life sometimes prepares for us most extraordinary surprises, just like for Elizabeth. We then begin to discover something of the life of Patricia, Elizabeth’s mother, partly through a bunch of letters but also as a witness to incidents in Patricia’s life. I really wanted to like this, and I'm not saying it's a bad book, but I was hoping for so much more than "eh, it's okay" from it.

I maybe at one point while reading this ARC said are you serious and then started muttering to myself about just DNFing it. While I certainly understood Elizabeth's quest for information, I felt she was a fairly impulsive character. It is here that the story gets a firmer foothole and we, as readers, will come to see what Graham Norton has in mind for us. Of course, she is not there for guidance so she turns to her divorced husband to step in and be a father, something he has done little of before this.

The two treads of the story, current and historical , presented in parallel are an easy read and except for one element the plot is totally acceptable: where are Mary's relatives? I cannot say much here it would ruin the story ,very sad thread in it and a desperate act that tore lives apart.