Home Stretch by Graham Norton

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER + WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH POPULAR FICTION AWARDS

In his compelling new novel, Home Stretch, Norton demonstrates his keen understanding of the power of stigma and secrecy – with quietly devastating results.

It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for the wedding of two of its young inhabitants. They’re barely adults, not so long out of school and still part of the same set of friends they’ve grown up with.   As the friends head home from the beach that last night before the wedding, there is a car accident. Three survive the crash but three are killed.  And the reverberations are felt throughout the small town.

Connor, the young driver of the car, lives. But staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame, and so he leaves the only place he knows for another life.  Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, by the noughties he has made a home – of sorts  – for himself in New York.  The city provides shelter and possibility for the displaced, somewhere Connor can forget his past and forge a new life.   But the secrets, the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to meet his past.

Graham Norton said: “Like many, I had always wanted to write a novel, but quietly assumed it would remain an unrealised ambition. I am, therefore, both astonished and delighted to find myself talking about my third book. Home Stretch is my most personal story to date and I look forward to readers meeting these new characters. The choices we make as young people can have long lasting consequences, sometimes unexpected, and often devastating. Home Stretch is a book that begins with a catastrophic accident. Three people survive, but are they really the lucky ones?”

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