Review by Booklist Review
Carol Crottie lives at number seven Stable Row in Ballytoor, Ireland. At least she did until her boyfriend, Declan, became ill, and his children, Killian and Sally, moved him into a care home and promptly kicked Carol out of the house. Their relationship was the subject of much local gossip--Declan's wife disappeared when the children were young, and nobody knows what the much younger Carol sees in him. Still, Carol's parents, especially her mother, Moira, won't stand for her being displaced, so they cook up a scheme to buy the house out from under Killian and Sally. Meanwhile, Killian is facing parenthood with his husband, Colin, and he's not sure he's ready, and Sally deepens her shut-in tendencies, only talking to her Facebook friend Bindy. Then Carol and Moira make a shocking discovery in number seven, calling Declan's real character into question. Norton's appealing novels (Home Stretch, 2021) are darkly comic looks at small-town Irish life, and here he focuses on the mother-daughter relationship and asks how well we can really know each other.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Sept.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Irish comedian Norton casts a gimlet eye on relationships in this fourth novel set in the land of his birth. Norton's absorbing novels blend domestic strife and intriguing tragedies, and in his latest, he excavates the lengths to which people allow themselves to be manipulated in order to get along. English teacher Carol Crottie loses her husband to a French teacher, and years pass before she falls in love again. No one understands what she sees in Declan Barry, an older man whose wife went missing years before. When the never-divorced Declan is later diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, his children, Killian and Sally, move him into a care home and then callously kick unemployed, 48-year-old Carol out of the lovely house she and Declan shared and put it on the market. This emotionally propulsive novel then veers into mystery territory as Carol, prodded by her pushy mother, discovers the truth about Declan's missing wife and why his children treat her so cruelly. She also discovers the lengths to which her mother will go to hide a secret. With sensitivity and a knack for understanding people's feelings and motivations, Norton also examines the discord in Killian's marriage as he and husband Colin await the birth of their daughter through surrogacy, as well as Sally's inability to form relationships outside the realm of social media and why her once-close relationship with Carol turned ugly. Norton's sometimes-charming, sometimes-sinister novel, set in the fictional Irish village of Ballytoor, gently leads Carol toward a painful yet revelatory examination of her relationships with Declan, his children, and her own son, Craig. Perfect for fans of Maeve Binchy's Ireland-set works of fiction and Alexander McCall Smith's quirky, character-driven comic novels. A heartfelt look at how family members make and break each other. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
