Onyx reviews: Forever Home by Graham Norton

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 06/10/2023

The house on Stable Row belies its name. Stability isn't its hallmark. The original owner, Declan Barry, lived there with his wife, Joan, and two children, Killian and Sally, until Joan vanished one day over two decades ago, never to be heard from again. Naturally, people in the small Irish community of Ballytoor view Declan with some suspicion.

However, Carol Crottie, a divorcée with an adult child, thinks she's found the second chapter in her life when she meets Declan. Sally is one of her students, so their paths cross regularly and Carol volunteers to tutor the girl. Everything is going fine until romantic feelings develop between Carol and Declan. None of the offspring—his or hers—are happy with this development.

Carol retires from teaching and moves into Stable Row but she and Declan are never married, owing to the complicated status of his original wife. Therefore, when Declan falls permanently ill, she has no legal standing and his kids can't wait to sell the house from under her, forcing her to move back in with her elderly and financially independent parents. Her mother, Moira, is overbearing and her father, Dave, loves to tinker (with his industrial-sized coffee machine, primarily) and mend things. He decides to purchase the Stable Row house, his way of fixing Carol's problem. However, upon reflection, Carol decides she doesn't want to live there, so the Crotties prepare to flip the house.

Carol heard Declan say many times that he would never sell the house. While she and her mother and surveying the property to see what upgrades might be in order before putting it back on the market, they discover exactly why he was so adamant about holding on to it. However, he is no longer capable of explaining what happened or his part in it.

Thus begins a comedy of errors in which complicated choices are made in lieu of straightforward action. Moira Crottie has a plan to make sure Carol isn't tarnished by past events in the Barry household, although it's not necessarily a choice everyone would make. (There are a couple of instances in the book where people do inexplicable things to further the story.)

The novel is primarily about the matrix of relationships in this fictional small coastal community near Cork (which is also where Norton grew up). In light of certain developments, Carol is forced to re-evaluate the man with whom she intended to spend the rest of her life. Relegated to her family home, she also has the opportunity to re-explore her complicated relationship with her parents. She tries her best to connect (or re-connect) with Declan's adult children, but they are having issues of their own, dealing with their father's unexpected and rapid decline together with their feelings about their absentee mother. Sally lives a mostly solitary life, working in an elder care home, whereas Killian and his partner Colin are about to embark on a new life after they decide to have a child.

The book is full of twists and turns, as well as some witty and clever turns of phrase and high drama as the plan to conceal the secret of Stable Row leads to some real jeopardy, all presented in the inimitable style of a true Irish storyteller.