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Sosuke Natsukawa's international bestseller, translated from Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai, is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper. Neither family is excited about their relationship and the small town gossips can't understand why Carol would be into a man like Declan. When events ( set in motion by Declan’s children) put Declan into a care facility, they heartlessly throw Carol out of the house and put it up for sale.
This is the fourth book I’ve read by the author and I’ve really enjoyed them all but this one not so much. But when Carol and Declan became something more and Carol moves into the house the tension is palpable. As Declan falls ill, his equally untrusting and speculative children force Carol to leave and move in with her parents. 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. Forever Home is a deliciously dark comedy drama, full of secrets, bad decisions and difficult relationships.
Carol is devasted knowing Declan would be against selling the family home but with no other choice she moves in with her mother Moira. This story is as witty and smart as it is moving and poignant, and more than once it brought me to tears as I was reading about the bonds that the characters developed.
Bolting that on to an increasingly slapstick crime caper feels odd, though, particularly when the reason for the big secret is not something you’d readily make light of. When events (set in motion by Declan's children) put Declan into a care facility, they heartlessly throw Carol out of the house and put it up for sale. To her dismay, she discovers that the Barry siblings have put the house up for sale, despite it being their father’s wish for the house never to be sold.It makes the motivations and actions of the characters in the third act feel inauthentic murder-mystery staples. Mixing comedy with mystery, imbued with a dark shadow and handling some very serious themes, Graham Norton has written another really enjoyable piece of fiction.
It's wonderfully funny, yet a bit sad, filled with secrets galore, twists and turns in family dynamics and to what lengths a family will go to protect each other. In this selection I particularly liked Trollope’s Christmas at Thompson Hall and Alice Munro’s The Turkey Season, both of which managed to pull off that particular skill of being both amusing and poignant. In his tense and darkly comic new novel Norton casts a light on the relationship between mothers and daughters, and truth and self-preservation with unnerving effect. A winning mix of family drama and comedy crime caper… you may well find yourself reading it in one sitting. The fictional town of Ballytoor is small and nearly everyone went to the same school; the one where Carol teaches.
It started out strong and went on a little too long and kind of lost its way a bit some, but overall I enjoy It. There are more serious issues dealt with in the book (dementia, child pornography, gay couple having a child), but these are all handled with the lightest of touches so that the book never becomes bogged down but rather stays entertaining and gossipy. The story really begins years later, after her beloved, Declan, has succumbed to some type of Alzheimer’s.
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