Contemporary Authors

• Holding ( novel) Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2016
• So Me Hodder (London, England), 2005
• Ask Graham: He's Been Everywhere, He's Seen Everything: Now Graham Norton's Here to Solve Your Problems! John Blake (London, England), 2010

1. Ask Graham : he's been everywhere, he's seen everything : now Graham Norton's here to solve your problems! LCCN 2011453195 Type of material Book Personal name Norton, Graham, 1963- Main title Ask Graham : he's been everywhere, he's seen everything : now Graham Norton's here to solve your problems! / [Graham Norton]. Published/Created London : John Blake, 2010. Description vi, 250 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. ISBN 9781843582977 184358297X Links Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1202/2011453195-b.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1202/2011453195-d.html CALL NUMBER PN5146.N67 A4 2010 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. Holding : a novel LCCN 2017012867 Type of material Book Personal name Norton, Graham, 1963- author. Main title Holding : a novel / Graham Norton. Edition First Atria Books hardcover edition. Published/Produced New York : Atria Books, 2017. Description 264 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9781501173264 (hardback) CALL NUMBER PR6114.O785 H65 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 3. Holding LCCN 2017430023 Type of material Book Personal name Norton, Graham, 1963- author. Main title Holding / Graham Norton. Published/Produced London : Hodder & Stoughton, 2016. Description 312 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9781444792003 (hardback) 1444792008 (hardback) 9781444792034 (paperback) 1444792032 (paperback) CALL NUMBER PR6114.O785 H65 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 4. So me LCCN 2005440442 Type of material Book Personal name Norton, Graham, 1963- Main title So me / Graham Norton. Published/Created London : Hodder, 2005. Description x, 341 p. : col. ill. ; 20 cm. ISBN 0340833491 CALL NUMBER PN2601.N67 N67 2005 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• The Life and Loves of a He Devil: A Memoir by Graham Norton - 2015 Hodder, London

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Norton

  Graham Norton
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  For other people named Graham Norton, see Graham Norton (disambiguation).
  Graham Norton
  Graham Norton Crop.jpg
  Norton in 2010
  Born Graham William Walker
  4 April 1963 (age 54)
  Clondalkin, Dublin, Ireland
  Residence London, England, United Kingdom
  Occupation
  Presenter comedian actor writer commentator
  Years active 1992–present
  Known for The Graham Norton Show
  Height 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
  Graham William Walker (born 4 April 1963), known professionally as Graham Norton,[1] is an Irish television and radio presenter, comedian, actor, and writer based in the United Kingdom. He is a five-time BAFTA TV Award winner for his comedy chat show The Graham Norton Show. Originally shown on BBC Two before moving to other slots on BBC One, it succeeded Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in BBC One's prestigious late-Friday-evening slot in 2010.[2]

  He also presents on BBC Radio 2 and is the BBC television commentator of the Eurovision Song Contest, which led Hot Press to describe him as "the 21st century's answer to Terry Wogan".[3] Norton is known for his innuendo-laden dialogue and flamboyant presentation style. In 2012, he sold his production company, So Television, to ITV for around £17 million.[2] In a 2004 poll for the BBC, Norton was named the eighth most influential person in British culture.[4]

  Contents
  1 Early life
  2 Career
  2.1 Channel 4
  2.2 BBC
  2.2.1 Television
  2.2.2 Radio
  2.2.3 Eurovision
  2.3 Other
  3 Personal life
  4 Awards
  5 TV appearances
  5.1 Main presenting credits
  5.2 Other television credits
  6 Filmography
  7 Stand-up videos
  8 Bibliography
  8.1 Biography
  8.2 General non-fiction
  8.3 Fiction
  9 See also
  10 References
  11 External links
  Early life
  Norton was born in Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin, and grew up in Bandon, County Cork. His family are members of the Church of Ireland. His father's family were from County Wicklow, while his mother was Northern Irish, from Belfast.[5] Norton took part in the TV programme Who Do You Think You Are? to trace his ancestry. Despite discovering that his father's direct ancestors originated in Yorkshire and immigrated to Ireland during the Plantation period, Norton said he was comforted to find that his family had resided in Ireland for generations.[5]

  Norton was educated at Bandon Grammar School, in West Cork, and then University College, Cork (U.C.C.), where he spent two years studying English and French in the 1980s but did not complete his studies. In June 2013, he received an honorary doctorate from University College Cork.[6] Norton moved to London and attended the Central School of Speech and Drama.[7] He also worked as a waiter during that time.[8] Upon joining the actor's union Equity, he chose Norton (his great-grandmother's maiden name) as his stage name, as there was already an actor called Graham Walker.[5]

  Career
  Channel 4
  In 1992, Norton's stand-up comedy drag act as a tea-towel clad Mother Teresa of Calcutta in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe made the press when Scottish Television's religious affairs department mistakenly thought he represented the real Mother Teresa.[9] His first appearances in broadcasting were in the UK, where he had a spot as a regular comedian and panellist on the BBC Radio 4 show Loose Ends in the early 1990s, when the show ran on Saturday mornings. His rise to fame began as one of the early successes of Channel 5, when he won an award for his performance as the stand-in host of a late-night TV talk show usually presented by Jack Docherty.[10][11] This was followed by a comic quiz show on Channel 5 called Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment, which was not well received as a programme, but did enhance Norton's reputation as a comic and host. In 1996, he co-hosted the late-night quiz show Carnal Knowledge on ITV with Maria McErlane.

  In 1996, Norton played the part of Father Noel Furlong in three episodes ("Hell", "Flight into Terror", "The Mainland") of the Channel 4 series Father Ted,[12] which was set on the fictional "Craggy Island" off the west coast of Ireland. Father Furlong was often seen taking charge of the St. Luke's Youth Group.

  After this early success, Norton moved to Channel 4 to host his own chat shows including So Graham Norton and V Graham Norton. As a performer who is not only openly gay,[13] but also camp and flamboyant, it was here that Norton's act was fully honed as a cheeky, innuendo-laden joker.[citation needed]

  In 2003, he was the subject of controversy in the United Kingdom when, on his show on Channel 4, he made a comedic reference to the recent death of Bee Gees singer Maurice Gibb. The Independent Television Commission (I.T.C.) investigated after complaints about this insensitivity were received and eventually Channel 4 had to make two apologies: one in the form of a caption slide before the show, another from Norton in person.

  Also in 2003, Norton was listed in The Observer as one of the 1000 funniest acts in British comedy. (Though Norton is Irish, the bulk of his television career has been in the UK.) In January 2004, he was named the most powerful person in TV comedy by Radio Times.[14]

  In the summer of 2004, Norton ventured into American television. The Graham Norton Effect debuted on 24 June 2004 on Comedy Central, and was also broadcast in the UK on BBC Three. In the midst of controversy surrounding Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's Super Bowl performance, Norton was wary of moving into the market.[15]

  BBC
  Television

  Norton at the 2009 BAFTA Awards
  In 2005, Norton moved to the BBC and began hosting the Saturday evening reality TV series Strictly Dance Fever on BBC One, as well as a new comedy chat show, Graham Norton's Bigger Picture. He also read stories some nights on the BBC children's channel CBeebies as part of Bedtime Hour.

  In 2006, Norton hosted the BBC One series How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? in which Andrew Lloyd Webber tried to find a lead actress for his West End version of The Sound of Music. Norton has subsequently presented the three follow-up series: Any Dream Will Do in 2007, in which a group of males competed to win the role of Joseph in the West End production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; I'd Do Anything in 2008, in which Lloyd Webber seeks to find the parts of Nancy and Oliver for Sir Cameron Mackintosh's production of Lionel Bart's Oliver!; and Over the Rainbow in 2010, following a similar format to find a new Dorothy for a Wizard of Oz West end Production.

  Norton hosted various other shows for the BBC during this time, including When Will I Be Famous? (2007), The One and Only (2008) and Totally Saturday (2009). Since 2007, Norton has also been a regular host of The British Academy Television Awards. On 7 July 2007, Norton presented at Live Earth and undertook a trip to Ethiopia with the Born Free Foundation to highlight the plight of the Ethiopian wolf – the rarest canid in the world. In the same year, he was the subject of an episode of the BBC1 genealogy documentary Who Do You Think You Are?.

  Norton's chat show, The Graham Norton Show, began on 22 February 2007 on BBC Two. The format is very similar to his previous Channel 4 shows. On 6 October 2009, the show moved to BBC One, in a new one-hour format.

  In May 2010, he stood in for Chris Evans' breakfast show on BBC Radio 2. Later that month, it was confirmed that he would be replacing Jonathan Ross's Saturday morning slot on the same station.

  In December 2011, the panel show Would You Rather...? with Graham Norton premiered on BBC America in the time slot immediately following The Graham Norton Show. Recorded in New York, it is one of BBC America's earliest efforts at producing original programming, and is also the first panel game the channel has shown, either of British or American origin.

  Radio
  Norton presents a Saturday morning show on BBC Radio 2, featuring guest interviews and music. It also features a "agony aunt" section with advice from Maria McErlane and Norton, called "Grill Graham". "Tune with a Tale" is where a listener suggests playing a song with a plot, summarising the story it contains, and "I Can't Believe It's Not Better" is a feature where a listener requests a song that was previously a hit, but might be considered particularly bad now.

  In January 2012, Norton asked listeners to his Radio 2 show to help find his car, shortly after it was stolen. He called it "The Great Car Hunt" and told listeners to "Keep your eyes out for it. It was filthy by the way."[16]

  Eurovision

  Norton with Josh Dubovie at the Eurovision Song Contest 2010
  Norton, along with Claudia Winkleman, hosted the first annual Eurovision Dance Contest, which was held on 1 September 2007 in London, England. The format was based on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing and the EBU's Eurovision Song Contest. Norton and Winkleman also hosted the 2008 Contest in Glasgow, Scotland.

  In October 2008, it was confirmed by the BBC that Norton would replace Terry Wogan as the presenter of the UK heats of the Eurovision Song Contest, Your Country Needs You.

  On 5 December 2008, it was announced that Norton would also take over from Wogan as the presenter of the main Eurovision Song Contest.[17] The 54th Eurovision Song Contest was held in the Olimpiyskiy (Olympic) Stadium, Moscow on 16 May 2009.

  Norton's debut jokes received some positive reviews from the British press. The Guardian noted his comments on Iceland's entry, which finished in second place, had "rooted around in a cupboard and found an old bridesmaid dress from 1987" and the Armenian singers, who finished in 10th place, were sporting traditional dress, "which would be true if you come from the village where Liberace is the mayor."[18] The Times noted his highlighting of the arrest of 30 gay rights protesters in Moscow – "heavy-handed policing has really marred what has been a fantastic Eurovision."[18]

  In 2015 Norton, along with Petra Mede, hosted the Eurovision's Greatest Hits concert show on 31 March at the Eventim Apollo, in Hammersmith, London to commemorate the Contest's 60th anniversary.

  Other
  Norton played Mr. Puckov in the 2006 American comedy spoof film Another Gay Movie. In 2007, Norton played Taylor in the romantic comedy film, I Could Never Be Your Woman.

  Norton was involved in a high-publicity advertising campaign for the UK National Lottery as an animated unicorn, the stooge to a character based on Lady Luck (played by Fay Ripley). He has also advertised McVitie's biscuits.

  In 2007, Norton featured in Girls Aloud and Sugababes' Comic Relief video for the single "Walk This Way"

  In January 2009, Norton made his West End stage debut in a revival of La Cage Aux Folles at the Playhouse Theatre.

  Since 2009, Norton has been the host of the comedy game-show Most Popular on US cable television channel WE tv.[19]

  Norton currently writes an advice column in The Daily Telegraph newspaper. In October 2010, these columns were made into a book entitled Ask Graham, published by John Blake Publishing.

  In 2016, Norton published his debut novel Holding, published by Hodder & Stoughton, about a murder in an Irish rural community.[20] Norton won Popular Fiction Book of the Year award for Holding[21] in the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2016.

  On 7 March 2013, Norton broke the Guinness World Record for "Most Questions Asked on a TV Chat Show" on Comic Relief's Big Chat, which raised £1.02 million.[22]

  In 2014, Norton attacked the decision by Irish broadcaster RTÉ to settle out of court with opponents of gay marriage who claimed they had been defamed in an edition of the Saturday Night Show.[23]

  In 2014, Norton publicly backed "Hacked Off" and its campaign toward UK press self-regulation by "safeguarding the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable".[24][25][26]

  In October 2014, Norton released his second memoir, The Life and Loves of a He-Devil. It won in the Non-Fiction Book of the Year category at the 2014 Irish Book Awards.[27] Also in 2014, he was named in the top 10 on the World Pride Power list.[28]

  Norton has a shareholding of two percent in New Zealand winery Invivo Wines.[29] Norton has his own wine range in collaboration with Invivo, the first wine was first released in 2014.[30]

  In July 2015, the Bishop of Cork, Dr. Paul Colton, hosted an evening with Norton involving 90 minutes of interview, questions, and answers with an audience of more than 400 people. The event, part of the West Cork Literary Festival, was sold out.[31]

  Personal life

  Norton with his dog Bailey in 2006, supporting Crusaid
  In 1988, Norton was mugged, beaten, and stabbed by a group of attackers on a street in London. He lost half of his blood and nearly died, and was hospitalised for two-and-a-half weeks. Norton eventually recovered from the attack and has openly joked about it on-air. During filming of the BBC's 2013 Christmas advert, he coincidentally had to film in the spot of the attack (unbeknownst to the directors), and said he felt momentarily uneasy.[7][32]

  Norton resides in London.[33] He owns a holiday home in Ahakista, County Cork.[citation needed] Norton has two dogs, a labradoodle called Bailey and a second dog called Madge, which he adopted from the UK charity Dogs Trust.

  Norton is openly gay.[13]

  Awards
  Year Award Work Result Notes
  1999 Gaytime Gay Presenter of the Year Won
  2000 British Academy Television Awards Best Entertainment Performance So Graham Norton Won
  2001 Royal Television Society Best Presenter So Graham Norton Won [34][35]
  2001 British Academy Television Awards Best Entertainment Performance So Graham Norton Won
  2002 Won
  2011 The Graham Norton Show Won
  2012 Won
  2013 Nominated
  2013 Lew Grade Award for Entertainment Programme Won
  2014 Best Entertainment Performance Nominated
  2015 Nominated
  2015 Best Comedy Programme or Series Won [36]
  2016 Best Entertainment Performance Nominated
  2017 National Television Awards Special Recognition Award Won [37]
  TV appearances
  Main presenting credits
  Carnal Knowledge (1996)
  Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment (1997)
  So Graham Norton (1998–2002)
  V Graham Norton (2002–2003)
  NY Graham Norton (2004)
  The Graham Norton Effect (2004–2005)
  Graham Norton's Bigger Picture (2005–2006)
  Strictly Dance Fever (2005–2006)
  Generation Fame (2005)
  BBC/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical theatre talent searches (2006–2010)
  How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? (2006)
  Any Dream Will Do (2007)
  I'd Do Anything (2008)
  Over the Rainbow (2010)
  The Big Finish (2006)
  When Will I Be Famous? (2007)
  The Graham Norton Show (2007–present)
  The British Academy Television Awards (2007–present)
  Live Earth (2007)
  Eurovision Dance Contest (2007)
  The One and Only (2008)
  Eurovision Dance Contest (2008)
  Eurovision: Your Country Needs You (2009–2010)
  Eurovision Song Contest (UK commentator, 2009–present)
  Totally Saturday (2009)
  Most Popular (2009)
  Would You Rather...? with Graham Norton (BBC America, 2011–2012)
  Eurovision Song Contest's Greatest Hits (2015)
  Adele at the BBC (2015)
  Children in Need (2016–present)
  Let It Shine (2017)
  Other television credits
  Year Title Character Broadcaster
  1996–98 Father Ted:
  Hell
  Flight into Terror
  The Mainland
  Father Noel Furlong Channel 4
  2001 Rex the Runt: A Crap Day Out The Plants voice BBC
  Rex the Runt: Patio Osvalde Halitosis voice BBC
  The Kumars at No. 42 Himself BBC
  2002 Absolutely Fabulous: Gay Himself BBC
  2006 The Last Ever, Ever Footballers' Wives Brendan Spunk BBC/ITV
  2007 Who Do You Think You Are? Himself BBC
  Saving Planet Earth
  Saving Wolves
  Himself BBC
  Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List Himself Bravo
  Robbie the Reindeer in Close Encounters of the Herd Kind Computer voice BBC
  2016 RuPaul's All Stars Drag Race Himself/Guest Judge Logo TV
  Filmography
  Year Title Character Production
  1999 Stargay Graham Solex Canal+
  2006 Another Gay Movie Mr. Puckov Luna Pictures
  2007 I Could Never Be Your Woman Taylor The Weinstein Company
  2016 Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie Himself BBC Films
  Stand-up videos
  Live at the Roundhouse (19 November 2001)
  Bibliography
  Biography
  Norton, Graham (2004). So Me. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-83348-3. OCLC 57577106.
  Norton, Graham; Evernden, Clym (2014). The Life and Loves of a He Devil. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-1-444-79026-9. OCLC 894427373.
  General non-fiction
  Norton, Graham (2010). Ask Graham: He's Been Everywhere, He's Seen Everything. Now Graham Norton's Here to Solve Your Problems!. London: John Blake. ISBN 978-1-843-58501-5. OCLC 847858351.
  Fiction
  Norton, Graham (2016). Holding. London, England: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 9781444792003. OCLC 960416528.
  Norton, Graham (2017). Holding. New York: Atria Books. ISBN 978-1-501-17328-8. OCLC 989520337. – American edition

• BBC - http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/the-graham-norton-show/cast-crew/graham-norton

  GRAHAM NORTON
  Graham Norton is one of the UK's most popular television personalities. Originally Graham Walker, he was born and raised in Cork, Ireland.

  As a young man, he moved to San Francisco to live on a commune. After spending time in the States, he went to the UK to become a stand-up comedian.

  In 1996, he made a big splash on British television with his role as Father Noel on the highly-rated sitcom, "Father Ted."

  He went on to host two enormously successful, BAFTA-winning chat shows, "So Graham Norton" and "V Graham Norton," on the UK broadcaster Channel 4.

  Graham then moved to the BBC where his work has included hosting "Strictly Dance Fever," "Any Dream Will Do," "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria," "I'd Do Anything" as well as "Would You Rather...? with Graham Norton" for BBC America. Since 2008, he's served as the lead commentator for The BBC's "Eurovision Song Contest."

  In America, he had a short-lived talk show "The Graham Norton Effect," hosted the GLAAD Media Awards and appeared on "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List." He's also had cameos in "Another Gay Movie" (2006) and "I Could Never Be Your Woman" (2007), featuring Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd.

  In addition to a growing body of television work, Graham made a mark on the London stage when he starred in the West End revival of "La Cage Aux Folles" in 2009. He issued "Ask Graham," a collection of his Daily Telegraph columns, last year.

• BBC - http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/the-graham-norton-show/about

  ABOUT THE SHOW
  The fourteenth season of The Graham Norton Show is here! Graham Norton, the multi-award winning comedian and host, presents his talk show based on the people, trends, stories and aspects of celebrity culture that interest him most. He's entertaining the masses with everything you won't see on the news from celebrity guests' anecdotes and sillier stories buzzing in the ether to the unique quirks and obsessions of his audience. Expect trademark Norton comedy monologues, celeb chat, eccentric stories and characters and some good old-fashioned home-grown weirdness. The Graham Norton Show features Graham telling the sharpest jokes, trading quips with the celebrities who fascinate him and interacting with his fans. Great guests, great stories, great characters. All this ... and Graham Norton, too. Welcome to Graham's world!

• New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/style/graham-norton-bbc-holding-abc-carpet-and-home.html

  Graham Norton’s World of Wonder
  Encounters

  By STUART EMMRICH SEPT. 8, 2017

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  Graham Norton, the BBC talk show host, at ABC Carpet & Home. Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times
  At around 11:15 on Monday morning, when Manhattan was mostly empty because of the Labor Day holiday, Graham Norton, the BBC talk show host, entered the ABC Carpet & Home store on Broadway and 18th Street. Dressed in a dark green, intricately patterned Thorsun shirt and slate gray Citizens of Humanity jeans (the same outfit he had worn earlier in the day on “Good Morning America”), he had on his face the anticipatory look of a child about to run free in his favorite toy shop.

  Mr. Norton, 54, first visited the store about 15 years ago, when he had just bought a two-bedroom mews house in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. “I was doing my talk show five nights a week, and all this money was rolling in,” he said. “I went a little crazy and bought this house that I neither need nor use a lot. But I love New York.”

  Soon after he bought the house, a friend brought him to this temple of luxurious bohemia to buy some sheets. “We walked in and it was just love at first sight,” he said. “This place is just amazing.”

  We quickly headed up to the fifth floor, billed as “classic & timeless,” and wandered around a grouping of eclectic furnishings: some new, some old (and occasionally tattered) and all carrying hefty price tags. “That’s rather nice,” he said as he paused to look closer at a vintage love seat with pale flowered fabric faded by time and worn away in one spot, and its matching sofa.

  The love seat was $2,250, the sofa, $4,400. “Hmmm,” Mr. Norton said, walking away.

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” he said as he passed a couch by the New York furniture designer John Derian, part of a collection sold under the Cisco Brothers brand. “I like all of this. They are all quite nice.” Across the room he spotted an oddly patterned couch that he found intriguing: “It looks like it’s a repurposed denim skirt.”

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  But as we got closer, he fingered the fabric and said dismissively, “Oh, that would wear really badly.” A striking chair in a delicate deep blue fabric was also rejected for practical reasons: “I have dogs, so that’s not happening.”

  Photo

  Mr. Norton first visited ABC Carpet & Home 15 years ago and fell in love with the store. Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times
  Another shopper stood and stared. “Didn’t I just see you on TV two hours ago?” he said as Mr. Norton passed.

  “Yes, yes, that was me — thank you,” Mr. Norton replied briskly before checking the price tag of a low-slung mauve couch. “That is an interesting color, isn’t it?”

  While we moved on, Mr. Norton turned to me and said, “It’s so funny. When I walked into the ‘Good Morning America’ building this morning, there were all these people there checking my ID and asking who I was and why was I there. Then after I had been on the show, and I came back out, they all asked me to take a selfie with them. They still didn’t know who I was, but they had seen me being interviewed and they knew I was famous, and that was enough.”

  Mr. Norton had been on “G.M.A.” (and would later be on “The Rachael Ray Show” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”) to promote the United States publication of his first novel, “Holding,” a murder mystery set in a village in rural Ireland similar to the one Mr. Norton grew up in. With its tale of provincial life, gimlet-eyed spinsters and thwarted love — not to mention the discovery of a dead body — it feels almost like a Miss Marple mystery written by Colm Toibin.

  Mr. Norton, who has drawn high ratings for almost 20 years, is the author of two best-selling memoirs, but this is his first novel.

  Why a murder mystery?

  “It’s a recognizable structure,” he said over lunch (a fried-fish sandwich and a glass of chardonnay) at ABC Cocina, where we went after he had bought a Frette duvet cover to replace the one he had bought 15 years earlier.

  “You find a body. Then you find a second body. And then you go from there. And there is a reason to keep you reading. Even if it’s an awful book, you still keeping reading it to find out what happened.” (“Holding” is not an awful book. It is actually quite a good read, and received largely enthusiastic reviews when first published in Britain. It is also being made into a TV movie.)

  Photo

  Mr. Norton looking at a stack of used books that have been repurposed into a decorative sculpture. Mr. Norton’s first novel, “Holding,” was published in Britain last year and recently came out in the United States. Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times
  The main character, P. J. Collins, a bumbling local sergeant with a serious weight problem, is an unlikely hero and an even more unlikely love interest. (Two of the other characters in the novel, both murder suspects, pursue a relationship with him.)

  Sergeant Collins’s anguish over his bulk, and his constant rebukes to himself about how much he eats, feel awfully close to the bone, as it were. Was Mr. Norton fat as a child? “Mentally, yes,” he said. “I think everyone has a very dysfunctional relationship with food.”

  But he said he was determined that P. J. not lose weight, as part of a happy ending: "That was not going to be his story.”

  He added, “I have a very overweight friend, and she read the book. And I know she read it, because she texted me, 'Have your book. Reading it!' And she has never mentioned it again. And I have never mentioned it again. And I wonder if that’s the reason — because I’m describing a world that she knows very well and that she assumes I do not. But who knows? Maybe she just hated the book.”

  The genesis of the plot came from a story his mother told him about an abandoned house in the Irish town of his youth, and the three unmarried sisters who lived there. “To be honest, to do that story justice, the book would have had to have been an almost ‘Remains of the Day’ kind of thing,” Mr. Norton said. “But I didn’t have the skill set to do that. So I decided to kill someone and turn it into a murder mystery.”

  Becoming a fiction writer is the latest career move for someone who, with his talk show, TV specials, hosting gig for the Eurovision contest and even an “agony uncle” advice column in The Telegraph, exemplifies the word “workaholic.”

  At the BBC, he earns a reported 900,000 pounds a year (roughly $1.17 million), which makes him one of the highest-paid stars in British television. The salary also caused a certain amount of eye rolling in British media circles recently, when the government-funded BBC was forced to disclose the salaries of its stars and it was revealed that there was a wide discrepancy between what the network paid its male and female employees.

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  That was not Mr. Norton’s most famous brush with the tabloid press, however. A few years ago, an ex-boyfriend gave an interview to a British newspaper in which he said that the two broke up because Mr. Norton “could drink up to four bottles of wine in an evening” and seemed to care more about his two dogs than him.

  “That’s probably the only real kiss-and-tell I’ve been involved in; it was something, to feel really betrayed,” he said. “What’s good, of course, is that it makes you feel a lot better about the breakup. And the odd thing was, in Britain, it was almost like I planted that story, because of the amazing amount of good press I got from it. ‘Yeah, I like to drink and I like dogs.’ Those happen to be two very important things to the British people.”

  Mr. Norton is now single and lives in an apartment in the Wapping neighborhood of London with Bailey, a Labradoodle and Madge, a terrier. (“The shelter named her Madonna, but I thought, ‘I can’t have a dog named Madonna,’ and so I changed it to Madge.”)

  He seems content with that arrangement. “The reality is that, as you get older, the more fussy you become,” he said. “But the older you get, the less right you have to be fussy.” Or as he told one interviewer: “I would prefer to live alone than with towels that are folded incorrectly.”

  Having caught the fiction bug, he is now working on his second novel — “a mystery, but not a murder mystery.”

  But as our earlier stroll through the store suggested, maybe being an author isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For there, in the middle of the fourth-floor showroom, was a towering stack of used books, perhaps 300 in all, repurposed into a piece of decorative sculpture for someone with a high-ceilinged living room.

  “That’s a lesson for any author,” Mr. Norton said. “You put all that effort into what you think is your life’s work, and it ends up as part of a decorative pillar in a furniture shop.”

  Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram.

  A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2017, on Page ST12 of the New York edition with the headline: Graham Norton on Furniture and Fame. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

• Irish Examiner - https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsfilmtv/graham-norton-onlife-off-camera-andhis-debut-novel-holding-427004.html

  QUOTED: "People didn’t know who I was from a hole in the ground before I went into television so I’ve created my own television persona and you can’t then turn around and go, why does everyone think I’m like that? I know why they think I’m like that because for years that’s what I was doing on TV. The people writing about it are surprised this is the book I wrote. I’m surprised this is the book I wrote."
  "Even though there’s been a very nice reaction to this I’m not going to go, that’s it, eureka, I’m a novelist and flee the television studio. I am very aware that I have a job and a career and this is a lovely treat."

  BREXIT
  HOME»LIFESTYLE»ARTS, BOOKS, FILM & TV
  Graham Norton on life off camera and his debut novel Holding

  286

  Saturday, October 22, 2016

  By Caroline O'Doherty

  Senior Reporter

  Graham Norton’s debut novel – a murder story set in a fictional West Cork town – is one of the best books you’ll read this year. How can one man have so many talents, wonders Caroline O’Doherty.

  You might imagine that feeling sorry for Graham Norton would take quite a bit of effort but there is a moment in conversation when there comes a terrific urge to ring up random numbers in Hollywood and berate whoever answers for their thoughtlessness towards him.

  He’s talking about how life is when his weekly celebrityfest, The Graham Norton Show on BBC1, is over, the audience leaves, the lights go down and the heartthrobs, pin-ups, Oscar winners and box office magnets go out to play.

  “We record on a Thursday so often on a Friday morning I’ll see pictures online and in the papers of the guests leaving a restaurant, having dinner, going to a party. And where am I?

  "I could have gone if anyone asked me but it wouldn’t cross their mind to ask me because I’m like the help, I’m the staff,” he says, adopting the expression of a wounded puppy.

  “I notice it often when the band is playing and there’s a break in the conversation and the people on the couch suddenly all turn in to each other and they chat and have a marvellous time between themselves. I’m just like part of the furniture.

  “It’s fine — don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining,” he says stoically.

  ”I just think it’s an interesting dynamic. People at home watching think ‘oh look, they’re all getting on great and must be good friends’ but no, lines are not crossed.”

  But as quickly as a picture of Norton sitting Cinderella-like by a cold hearth springs to mind, the urge to act on it disappears. Because he’s actually sitting in the lovely Merrion Hotel in Dublin, soon to meet an adoring audience, grinning broadly at his lot.

  And why wouldn’t he be? He’s the Corkman who conquered Britain, possibly the highest paid broadcaster in the BBC with the number one chat show and a knack for making memorable TV.

  He allows himself a little regret at not getting Brad and Angelina to appear before they required a UN peace-keeping force to maintain calm between them but he’s chuffed that he bagged the likes of George Clooney and Maggie Smith who steadfastly rebuff the talk show circuit.

  So even though he’s very much the middleman on screen, a celebrity in his own right but one who identifies with the audience when the megastars place their million dollar bottoms on his couch, it’s a very nice middle ground to hold.

  Besides, if he turned full-throttle celebrity, it’s unlikely he would have achieved his latest feat, the reason he’s in Ireland — the publication of his first novel.

  Two days after it hit the bookshops here, Holding was top of the bestsellers list and there’s not a palm tree, cocktail or blindingly white set of porcelain veneers to be found in its 300-odd pages.

  When advance copies hit critics’ desks in recent weeks, a common reaction was surprise, not just at the quality of the writing but at the complete absence of irreverence and smut from a man who’s made a career out of double entendres and naughty nudges and whose prior literary endeavours were confined to two raucous memoirs.

  Norton says he takes no offence at being typecast.

  “People didn’t know who I was from a hole in the ground before I went into television so I’ve created my own television persona and you can’t then turn around and go, why does everyone think I’m like that? I know why they think I’m like that because for years that’s what I was doing on TV.

  “The people writing about it are surprised this is the book I wrote. I’m surprised this is the book I wrote.”

  Holding is the story of the fictional west Cork village of Duneen where the discovery of human remains on land being broken for the first bit of new building since the recession brings to the surface secrets and sorrows that had lain buried for more than 20 years.

  It’s a sad story in essence but Norton’s characters, in particular the portly and lonely Garda Sergeant PJ Collins, another middle man in a community where he is neither local nor outsider, are not lost causes.

  Stuck in an interminable holding pattern, their lives are going in no particular direction, but they’re doing their best as real people do and it’s impossible as a reader not to want to will them on.

  Norton says he wrote the book purely for pleasure, enjoying rare alone time with his keyboard away from his other jobs which tend to involve large teams of people, many meetings and lots of opinions.

  At least that’s what he thought he thought.

  “When I finished it I was telling myself I didn’t care if anyone liked it and I was steeling myself for slings and arrows and abject failure,” he says.

  “But the minute you read a nice review or you hear it’s the number one book, it’s so pathetically pleasing that you realise, as it turns out, I really do care.”

  So do his fans. The series of readings and questions and answers sessions he has been doing across Britain and which brought him to Dublin this week have been sold out and Norton is keen to repay the loyalty by putting on a good show.

  “It’s an odd mix of book tour and stand-up. Yes, people have bought the book and they’ve come about the book but I haven’t stopped being Graham Norton off the telly so they expect a few laughs.

  “The problem is the book isn’t very funny,” (he laughs) “so I’m trying to shoehorn in some celebrity gossip between the deep reflections on lost love.”

  He’s not trying to stop being Graham Norton off the telly either.

  “I think it would drive me crazy if it was my life,” he says of writing.

  “Even though there’s been a very nice reaction to this I’m not going to go, that’s it, eureka, I’m a novelist and flee the television studio. I am very aware that I have a job and a career and this is a lovely treat.”

  The BBC will be relieved. They’ve recruited him on to the presenters’ line-up for the annual Children in Need marathon fundraiser, although he gasps at the widely assumed notion that he is being brought on board to replace the late Terry Wogan.

  “I’m not replacing Terry. I’m just being added to the roster. You can’t replace Terry and certainly not on Children in Need. This was Terry’s baby, a real passion project for him. He would do nine hours or something mad like that on air himself. A whole group of us will be sharing the load this time.”

  Another fresh venture for Norton is BBC’s new talent show, Let It Shine, which is devised by Gary Barlow and has been auditioning to find five young men to sing Take That songs in a planned musical charting the band’s rise to superstardom.

  He will be co-presenting and attempting to stifle giggles with Mel Giedroyc of the Great British Bake Off and says he is amazed by the standard of participant.

  “There have been so many shows that you would think at some point there would be a bottom to the pool of talent, like we have reached ground zero, we’re done. But we have found some brilliant people along the way.”

  All the same, he has mixed feelings about reality TV.

  “I wonder if I was 18 now would I apply to be on Big Brother or something like that and I think I might have so I thank God I’m not 18.

  “You’re in such a rush when you’re at that age and you think how can I make my mark, how can I get someone to notice me and that is a way to be noticed.

  “The trouble is it’s an awful way to be noticed because you become famous for nothing and no one’s paying you so you’ve all the downside of fame with none of the perks. You’re just having people shouting at you on the streets but you don’t have a career or income stream to make up for it. It’s pretty grim.”

  So he’s not likely to appear in a diary room or the jungle any time soon then?

  “Oh I hope not. Those ones you just do for a cheque. That’s the only reason to go on those things.

  “Some of the people on them, you think, if we’d known you were that hard up.... Like really, you should have just issued a press release saying unless I can raise this money I’m going to have to do Celebrity Big Brother. I mean, Rula Lenksa,” he says in mock horror, no doubt recalling the infamous scene where she went along with George Galloway pretending to be her cat.

  “I’d have written a cheque to save her from that.”

  In truth, he’s not likely to need anyone to pass round a collection tin for him. Along with the TV show, he has a Saturday morning radio programme on BBC2, an agony uncle column for the Daily Telegraph and a regular stint as wine blender for the Invivo vineyard.

  That started out as a novelty for him, after he fell in love with the label’s sauvignon blanc when it was served up on his show but he’s now a shareholder with a knack for turning out very popular and critically acclaimed blends.

  Not that he wants to be traipsing through the vineyard.

  “It’s in New Zealand,” he says as if he’s just been asked to run across Death Valley in mid-summer.

  He prefers to keep his jaunts local-ish, with a fondness for Italy and a huge love for his second home at Ahakista in west Cork — not

  Duneen but a close relative.

  He was there during the summer, will be back at the end of next month for his mum’s birthday and will pass a pleasant Christmas there too.

  “It’s so weird that I like it here so much. I couldn’t wait to get out of here and now it’s my number one place to come.

  “I think the older you become the harder London is. Every time I come back to it, I fall out of love with it just a tiny bit more. The mechanics of London are quite exhausting.”

  He’s also hugely unimpressed with the city’s erstwhile mayor, one Boris Johnson.

  As a BBC employee, Norton is not supposed to express political views but as an immigrant in Britain, he couldn’t resist having a go at the absurdity of the Brexit campaign.

  He dismisses home secretary Amber Rudd’s recent speech in which she urged firms to make lists of their foreign workers as being “plagiarised from Mein Kampf”.

  While Norton was never really in any danger of being booted out of Britain, his job will come under scrutiny in January when a cash-strapped BBC will be forced to disclose the salaries of its top stars. He says he’s ready for it, and can defend his earnings on the basis of the success of his shows.

  “My wages are newsworthy because people have heard of me and it is public money so there has to be some degree of accountability. However, we can’t have a referendum on everyone’s wages which is kind of what people want.”

  The impending kerfuffle is likely to make Norton long for an escape to Ahakista where he’s just Graham with the big house on the water’s edge whose wine sells in SuperValu and Centra, or at least to his office with his keyboard alone for company.

  “My mother said a sweet thing after I sent her the novel to read. She said, oh I forgot you wrote it. It’s odd because I’m such a great big show-off but I was really pleased by that. I disappeared myself.”

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• The Sun - https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2762062/graham-norton-bags-publishing-deal-to-pen-second-novel-as-first-murder-mystery-book-holding-is-turned-into-tv-drama/

  A WRITE NORTY DEAL Graham Norton bags publishing deal to pen second novel as first murder mystery book Holding is turned into TV drama
  The chat show host can add serious author to his CV after confirming his second novel will hit bookshelves next year

  EXCLUSIVE
  FROM DAN WOOTTON'S BIZARRE COLUMN
  1st February 2017, 8:58 pmUpdated: 2nd February 2017, 9:14 pm
  GRAHAM NORTON will no longer just be known for top chat and writing punchlines.

  The comedy and TV king is now a serious author — and I can reveal he has secured a deal to write his second novel.

  Graham Norton's debut book, murder mystery Holding received critical acclaim after being published last year
  10
  Graham Norton's debut book, murder mystery Holding received critical acclaim after being published last year
  Graham released his debut offering, Holding, in October and immediately found success when it was snapped up to be made into a television series.

  Now publishers Hodder & Stoughton want Graham to pen his next book right away.

  In an exclusive interview, he confirmed: “I’m doing another one. I’ve started this year and it will come out next year.”

  The TV host is now officially penning his second novel, which will hit bookshelves next yearPA:PRESS ASSOCIATION ARCHIVE
  10
  The TV host is now officially penning his second novel, which will hit bookshelves next year
  Holding, a murder-mystery set in a fictional Irish village, won critical acclaim after its release and is being developed for TV by former EastEnders boss Dominic Treadwell-Collins.

  Graham has described the experience of writing the tale as “tough”.

  Speaking at Tuesday’s Costa Book Awards, where he was a judge, Graham said: “It’s odd because I don’t know any of these people.

  "Having been through the process, the fact that these books are being recognised is just terrific.

  “But it’s such a kind of lonely, intense experience.

  Graham Norton last week won a special recognition prize at the National TV AwardsGETTY IMAGES
  10
  Graham Norton last week won a special recognition prize at the National TV Awards
  “So to come blinking into the light and be given free glasses of champagne is terrific for all these writers.”

  Graham says he is over the moon to have his second book on the horizon.

  He only bagged his first deal for Holding thanks to an awkward trade- off with publishers, which saw him write his second autobiography, The Life And Loves Of A He Devil.

  He said last year: “I wanted to write a novel — they wanted a memoir. So we did a two-book deal and they got the memoir first, then I gave them the novel they didn’t want.

  Meanwhile Norton has signed a new, three year deal with the BBC for his chatshowPA:PRESS ASSOCIATION
  10
  Meanwhile Norton has signed a new, three year deal with the BBC for his chatshow
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  "I have to read a lot of celebrity novels for work and so long as it’s better than most of them, I’ll be OK.”

  The news caps an incredible month for Graham, who followed up his Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards last week by signing a new, three-year deal with the BBC.

  Play Video
  He said of his contract: “I think it takes the ­pressure off because you can relax and say, ‘Oh great, we’re in it for the long haul’.

  “The BBC have committed, we’re committed, so I think it’s a nice feeling.”

  Now all he needs to arrange with the Beeb is a good holiday to get busy writing his latest book.

• The Telegraph - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/10694363/Graham-Norton-to-publish-memoir-about-love.html

  QUOTED: "When I say this is the most personal thing I've ever written, don't worry—it also contains stories about ... dog poo and celebrity actress farts."

  HOME»CULTURE»BOOKS»BOOK NEWS
  Graham Norton to publish memoir about love
  Graham Norton writes second autobiography chronicling the loves of his life – including his dogs and Dolly Parton
  Graham Norton
  Graham Norton Photo: BBC
  By Anita Singh9:31AM GMT 13 Mar 2014
  Graham Norton is to publish a memoir on the theme of love, titled The Life And Loves of a He Devil.

  A decade after his first autobiography, So Me, Norton will write about the people and places that have meant the most to him from his childhood to the present day.

  The presenter and comedian said the book would cover his love for "Dolly Parton and dogs to wine and Ireland".

  He said: "It's been 10 years since I last put fingertip to keyboard. A lot has happened to me since then but being a decade older it strikes me that what makes a life interesting is less what happens to you, but more what drives and inspires you. A life of loves.

  "When I say this is the most personal thing I've ever written, don't worry – it also contains stories about mystery objects found in dog poo and celebrity actress farts."

  Related Articles
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  Hannah Black of publishing house Hodder said: "We're so proud to be publishing Graham. He's funny, original and impressively mischievous, and he's also a brilliantly clever storyteller loved by young and old across the nation."

  The Life and Loves of a He Devil will be published in October 2014.

  READ: Miranda Hart interviews Graham Norton

• Independent - https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/he-devils-in-the-detail-for-graham-norton-30687160.html

  He Devil's in the detail for Graham Norton. . .
  The BBC chat show host reveals how he reconnected with small-town Ireland after his father's funeral in 2006
  Spotlight: Graham Norton’s star has expanded since he wrote his first memoir 10 years ago.
  Spotlight: Graham Norton’s star has expanded since he wrote his first memoir 10 years ago.
  Deirdre Reynolds
  Deirdre Reynolds

  October 26 2014 2:30 AM

  One morning after the night before, Graham Norton was speed-cleaning his bedroom when he noticed that a key piece of evidence was missing.

  Alarmed that his cleaner, Margaret, should find a used condom among the rumble, he did what any good West Cork boy would do, and turned the place upside down, even texting the gentleman caller in question to see if he knew anything about the misplaced prophylactic.

  The mystery was solved two days later, when the TV presenter's giant Labradoodle, Bailey, set about doing his business in the local park. Unfortunately, the offending article got stuck.

  As his second memoir hit shelves here this week, it's just one of the cringeworthy anecdotes that Norton recounts as though to prove a point.

  Yes, he may have his own Friday night chat show on the BBC and be worth in the region of €38m, but the 51-year-old still finds himself having to wrangle an undigested condom from a dog's arse, all while praying he doesn't wind up on the front pages of the red tops in a bestiality scandal.

  Most people have never heard of Graham Walker, the failed actor from Bandon, but there isn't an Irish or British person alive who hasn't heard of comedian and TV personality, Graham Norton.

  Now considered a 'national treasure' on both sides of the pond, in the 10 years since he penned his first autobiography, So Me, Norton's star has expanded even further since being poached from Channel 4 by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

  And the BAFTA-winning host reckons his staggering success is all down to having an 'Irish Mammy'. "There are all sorts of modern phrases to describe my mother's style of parenting: tough love, firm but fair, no nonsense," jokes Norton, who took his great-grandmother's maiden name at drama school to avoid being confused with another actor. "I would simply call it Irish.

  "When I was about to do the Leaving Certificate, my mother gave me a good luck card. Inside it she had written, 'You can only do your best'. Then on the line below: '. . . but do it!'

  "Obviously I enjoy the trappings of wealth but equally I am my mother's son," adds the presenter, who got his big break filling in for Scottish comedian Jack Docherty on his Channel 5 chat show in 1997.

  "There is always a part of me that is mentally preparing for it all to end."

  Growing up gay in 1970s' small-town Ireland, the Guinness salesman's son never dreamt he'd end up sitting opposite stars like U2, Madonna and Tom Cruise, with loud suits and an even louder studio audience.

  As a Protestant teenager with confusing feelings towards the French foreign exchange student, he just knew he didn't belong.

  "Growing up, the TV was more than entertainment, it was a good friend and a window to a world outside rural West Cork," Norton reveals in The Life and Loves of a He Devil. "For me, sitting inside the box rather than being on the couch opposite it is still a dream come true."

  "It's impossible to imagine what it was like growing up gay in a world where homosexuality didn't exist," he continues. "People thought I was joking when I said on an Irish chat show that I just thought me feeling out of step was because I was Protestant, but it's true.

  "Obviously I knew I was different, but because I was an outsider for many reasons, it wasn't till much later and after hearing the stories of other gay men who had grown up in similar circumstances that I fully realised that I had been gay all along."

  Fleeing Cork for the bright lights of San Francisco at 20, former UCC student Norton admits he thought he'd never come back.

  So more than three decades on, it comes as just as much of a shock to him as it must to bemused tourists to find the International Emmy recipient wandering around the tiny village of Ahakista for two-and-a-half months each summer.

  Today, the presenter's mum Rhoda and sister Paula can even traverse the 'Graham Norton River Walkway' in Bandon, should the mood strike; while his old college bestowed its most famous dropout with an honorary doctorate last year.

  "A real turning point in my relationship with Ireland was when my father died," reveals Norton, who lost his dad, William, to Parkinson's disease in 2006. "As the funeral approached, in addition to seeing new facets of my father, I was also beginning to fully understand the small community I had grown up in.

  "Living there had stifled me and I spent most of my childhood and adolescence longing to be released. . . but now . . . the bonds that I had felt holding me back were now there to support me.

  "In recent years I have done more than simply return," adds the London-based star. "I have been invited back. This always makes me feel very grown up and is somehow a measure of success that no BAFTA or comedy award can begin to match."

  Despite his success abroad on hit shows such as Channel 4's So Graham Norton, Comedy Central's The Graham Norton Effect and now The Graham Norton Show on BBC One, or maybe because of it, Ireland's hottest telly export still has his detractors here, and there's 'nul points' for guessing why.

  "Oddly, the thing that incenses these people the most is when I am commenting on the Eurovision Song Contest and I refer to the UK entrant as 'we' and the Irish act as 'they'," says Norton, who also famously played camp cleric Fr Noel Furlong on Father Ted in the 1990s. "My Twitter feed lights up with hate-filled comments where 'traitor' is about the mildest of the insults.

  "It does seem surprising that these people can't figure out that I am doing a job and being paid by the British Broadcasting Corporation. If they are that fiercely patriotic then perhaps they should stop watching the BBC and enjoy Marty Whelan's Irish-centric commentary on RTÉ."

  "When I get on the plane to go to Cork, I feel like I'm going home," he explains, "but equally when I get ready to board the return flight to Heathrow I also feel that I am homeward-bound.

  "I know I'm not British, but it is the place I live, work, pay taxes and vote. The UK has given me my life, my friends and my career. Of course I feel like I belong, but that doesn't stop me feeling Irish: embracing one thing doesn't automatically mean rejecting another.

  "The people who don't understand that are the bullies, the homophobes and the racists."

  Anyway, having just signed another three-year contract with the BBC, the modern-day Terry Wogan isn't going anywhere.

  But he has no intention of becoming the Beeb's next Bruce Forsyth - who only quit Strictly Come Dancing earlier this year, aged 86 - either.

  "Retirement seems like such an odd word to apply to myself because I still feel so full of energy and enthusiasm," says Norton, who split from partner Trevor Patterson last year, "but at the same time I have no desire to be a Bruce Forsyth or Des O'Connor.

  "I love working but I also want some time to enjoy my life without the constraints and pressures that come with my job. The secret is to get bored of the show before the audience does, and I'm not there yet, but knowing where to stop the story to ensure a happy ending is the toughest job of all."

  If like Sirs Terry and Bruce before him, an OBE for his services to British broadcasting is forthcoming, don't worry he says, there's always his two pesky mutts, the aforementioned Bailey and wire-haired terrier Madge, to keep him grounded.

  "I dread to think how self-obsessed and removed from reality I might have become over the years if it wasn't for my furry friends," laughs Norton, who's set to sign copies of his book in Eason bookshop on O'Connell Street, Dublin on Saturday, November 8.

  "After all, it is hard to remain smug and aloof when you are wrestling with two over-excited dogs and struggling to pull a plastic bag out of your coat pocket to pick up a piece of shit."

  The Life and Loves of a He Devil: A Memoir by Graham Norton, published by Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99, 292 pages

  Indo Review

• Book Reporter - https://www.bookreporter.com/authors/graham-norton

  Graham Norton
  Graham Norton is a BAFTA award-winning comedian and the host of one of the United Kingdom’s most popular talk shows, "The Graham Norton Show." He is the author of Sunday Times bestsellers SO ME and THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A HE DEVIL. He also writes a weekly advice column for The Telegraph. He lives in London. HOLDING is his first novel.

• Daily Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3248906/Success-cost-dearly-Graham-Norton-s-pulling-biggest-names-TV-reveals-s-lot-sacrifices-reach-top.html

  Success has cost me dearly: Graham Norton's pulling in the biggest names on his TV show, but here he reveals that he's made a lot of sacrifices to reach the top
  Graham Norton reveals why he forwent relationships in favour of a career
  He tells of what we can expect from his very first novel
  The presenter also reveals what Madonna was really like
  By Jenny Johnston for the Daily Mail

  PUBLISHED: 18:31 EDT, 25 September 2015 | UPDATED: 18:31 EDT, 25 September 2015

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  Could this be a retirement plan for a self-confessed workaholic? It sounds suspiciously like it.

  Graham Norton reveals he’s spent the summer writing his first novel, which is supposed to be funny and a little bit dark in equal measure, but is currently ‘a bit on the bleak side’. ‘I’m going to have to get more laughs in there,’ he frets. ‘We can’t have anyone slitting their wrists.’

  All in all it’s been a painful process. He holds a mangled finger in the air and jokes that he’s been doing a bit of self-harming, managing to nearly slice off his finger after an encounter with a cut-glass vase.

  Graham Norton has just finished writing his first novel but he insists this is not a retirement plan +5
  Graham Norton has just finished writing his first novel but he insists this is not a retirement plan

  ‘My kitchen looked like a crime scene, like I’d been murdered. I couldn’t type and I had to go to the hospital every second day to get the dressings changed, so I’m way behind. I’ve written maybe a third of the novel when I should be finished. Any time now I’m going to have the publishers saying, “Hello, hello... er, book please.”’

  Even though his writing ability isn’t in doubt (his publishers wanted a novel after the success of his two sparkily written autobiographies, So Me in 2004 and The Life And Loves Of A He-Devil ten years later), he’s keen to manage expectations, lest anyone think he’s another of those celebs who think they’re Proust.

  This one will never win the Booker prize, and he’s fully expecting the literary Establishment to give him a kicking when it comes out. ‘I’m sure I’ll get reviewed by critics who’ve never had an opportunity to say how much they hate me, but will slag me off now I’ve wandered into their world.’

  The chat show host has secured some of the biggest celebrity names on his show, including Madonna +5
  The chat show host has secured some of the biggest celebrity names on his show, including Madonna

  All of this begs the question of whether he sees his future more as a writer than as Graham-off-the-telly. In some ways it’s puzzling that he hasn’t taken leave of our screens already, given that he once said he wanted to retire from TV by the time he was 50. He’s now 52.

  ‘I did say I was going to retire at 50, but that ship has sailed. And then you start to say, “I’ll go at 60” but, at 52, 60 doesn’t seem that old any more. Also, if I retire at 55 and live till I’m 85 that’s 30 years to be doing not very much. It’s definitely a dilemma.’

  What he does seem clear about is that his chat show has a limited shelf life. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of the big names drying up (Matt Damon kicked off the current series last night, and Robert De Niro appears next Friday), but he insists they will.

  ‘We’re getting all the big names now, and we’re at the top of the tree, but we weren’t before – and we won’t be again. I do watch other chat shows, and my own if I’m in – it’s important to know how it’s been edited. But some new show will come along and push us off. The key is for me to stop before the BBC says, “Taxi for Norton”.’

  That seems unlikely if the current run is anywhere near as entertaining as previous ones. In his 17 years as a chat show host Graham’s talked to pretty much everyone. He always said the guests he really wanted were Madonna, David Beckham and George Clooney, and all three boxes have since been ticked. Was Madonna a diva when she came on in 2012?

  ‘She didn’t make any demands. She came on and within a few minutes she was on the floor on her hands and knees!’

  David Beckham admitted some of his haircuts were big mistakes. The cornrow braids ‘were bad timing as I was going to South Africa with England and ended up meeting Nelson Mandela, so I regret that one’, and the mohican didn’t go down well with his manager Alex Ferguson.

  ‘I was in the dressing room before kick-off when Alex saw it and made me shave it off. I said no at first, then I saw his face change very quickly so I shaved it off in the toilet. He was very strict.’

  But perhaps Graham’s biggest coup was George Clooney, who came on earlier this year. As well as getting George to give an insight into life chez Clooney (‘Yes, we do normal things – there’s a bathroom and we use it’), Graham discovered his reputation as a joker is well deserved.

  Of the ongoing pranks between him and Brad Pitt, George said, ‘We’ve done some terrible things to each other. I had stationery made up with his name on and I’d send letters to other actors from him. I sent Meryl Streep a letter with a stack of dialect coach CDs saying they may help for her role in The Iron Lady.

  'I’ve sent letters to lots of people from Brad but I don’t tell either of them for a year or two. I’m doing one now – in a year or two you might hear I’ve been arrested! I think I’ve crossed the line, but I have a wife who’s a barrister, so I’ll be fine.’

  Perhaps Graham’s biggest coup was George Clooney, who appeared on the Graham Norton show earlier this year with Hugh Laurie and actress Britt Robertson +5
  Perhaps Graham’s biggest coup was George Clooney, who appeared on the Graham Norton show earlier this year with Hugh Laurie and actress Britt Robertson

  Surely that could have been a special show, an hour devoted solely to George? ‘He was brilliant and would have made a show on his own, but it’s the guests’ interaction that makes it so much fun,’ says Graham.

  ‘You get more out of them when they’re having a laugh with each other. Right now I’d absolutely love to have Brad and Angelina on to find out what he’s got planned to get his own back on Mr Clooney.’

  Of course it’s Graham’s cheeky chappie persona that puts his guests sufficiently at ease to reveal gems like these. Today, bushy of beard (‘I’m lazy and I hate shaving’) and bouncy of step, he arrives for our photo shoot and although he’s well known as a dog lover (he has a labradoodle called Bailey and a terrier called Madge) he happily plays with MJ, the white Persian cat he’ll be posing with. At one point he even takes over from MJ’s handler, who’s using a feather on a piece of string to get the cat to perform.

  Fun seems to be in his genes, and he insists he could never see himself as a Piers Morgan type who reduces his guests to tears. ‘Absolutely not. On some shows it’s quite a coup to have people cry, but we don’t do tears. We’re not in the business of upsetting people. It’s just a chat show. It’s actually a comedy show.’

  Even if he were to pull the plug on it, surely he’s Mr BBC now, occupying that position Terry Wogan did where if one show ends, another begins? He laughs and says, yes, he could do a daytime quiz. ‘I could do it in blocks, film five a day – in three months you’ve done a year’s work, and you’re keeping the wolf from the door.’ His face suggests he’d rather eat his own hand.

  Graham with his mother Rhoda in his home town of Brandon +5
  Graham with his mother Rhoda in his home town of Brandon

  And yet he’s such a showbiz slogger (after training as an actor, he moved into stand-up and appeared in Father Ted before getting his chat show) that surely he’d find it difficult to just walk away?

  He nods furiously. ‘To succeed in this business you do have to work very hard and sacrifice a lot to get there. There are years of penury. Once you’ve arrived, you don’t walk away from it lightly because getting there has cost you dear. Mind you, it’s quite a fun job, isn’t it? It’s not digging coal.’

  He may have a sofa full of stars every Friday, but he says he has surprisingly few celebrity friends. Yes, his Christmas cards may once have featured him and Dolly Parton, and he did go to Liza Minnelli’s wedding to David Gest, but these are exceptions.

  ‘People expect me to have these celebs on speed-dial and I just don’t. When I submitted my last book I’m sure the publishers were expecting lots of anecdotes, but all they got were stories about my friend Darren. What can you say? When I start to tell people about meeting Meryl Streep they invariably say, “We know. We saw it on your show.”’

  He admits everything in his life has ‘played second fiddle’ to his work. ‘The majority of people in showbiz put their career before everything. It’s some sort of weird psychological defect. As psychological problems go, it’s quite a good one to have. If it works out you end up with a nice life. But equally you miss out on a lot.’

  On some level I feel like I’ve failed because by the time you’re my age, you really should be settled
  What has he missed out on? ‘Well, I’m 52 and I’m single and on some level I feel like I’ve failed because by the time you’re my age, you really should be settled. But then I look at the relationships people around me have and I find myself asking, “Really?! That doesn’t look like winning to me.”

  'It seems that the compromises people have to make aren’t ones I’m willing to make. I don’t know the answer. Maybe I’m just suited to being single. Clearly I am. I’ve reached the point that when people ask, “Are you single at the moment?” I say, “Come on, you can drop the ‘at the moment’. I’m single forever.”’

  He still dates (‘I mean I’m not ruling it out. Who knows? Maybe I will find someone’) and would like to date someone his own age, but reckons that’s an ambition too far. ‘That’s the weird thing. Gay men my age don’t want to date someone their age.’

  He famously banned his mum Rhoda from reading his books. She did read some excerpts when the Mail serialised the last one, though – one headline was My Love Affair With The Bottle – and went into a panic about his account of his drinking habits.

  ‘She rang me and I could tell by her voice that she thought I was going to drop dead of alcohol poisoning at any moment. I had to say, “Mum, come on, you know me. We spend months at a time together. If I was a chronic alcoholic you’d have noticed.”’

  Graham insists that he is happy being single and says from what he's seen relationships aren't always to be envied +5
  Graham insists that he is happy being single and says from what he's seen relationships aren't always to be envied

  He’s questioned whether he has alcoholic tendencies but has decided he’s on the safe side of the line. ‘I do drink. I probably drink less than I used to, but do I drink too much? Yes, I probably do. Could I drink more? Yes, I could.’

  Interestingly, he says he doesn’t drink before his show, the glass of wine on the table is a prop. He says he still seeks out a glass of wine at a party before he can hurl himself into the chit-chat though. ‘Doesn’t everyone? I still get nervous and I know if I just have a glass of wine I’ll feel better. And I do.’

  He sounds remarkably grounded considering the life he’s lived. ‘I think I am grounded, but then sometimes I wonder. How do you know if you’ve stopped being grounded? If I am, it’s probably because success didn’t happen until my thirties. By then you’re mostly shaped as a person. That helps. I feel sorry for kids who have success young, the Miley Cyruses and the Justin Biebers, every mistake all over the internet.’

  Ever the outsider in his community (he was gay; a Protestant; he wanted to be an actor), he admits he felt alone ‘and the internet shows you you’re not alone’. He now has a home in Bantry near Cork, close to where he grew up, and relishes the return rather than dreading it as he used to. The familiarity he used to hate is now a comfort; the idea that everyone knows his business, a blessing.

  ‘It’s funny but a girl in Bantry once asked me what being famous was like and I said it was a bit like living in Bantry. Everyone knows you, and knows everything about you. In Bantry though, I know as much about them. I meet someone and I’m thinking, “I know you’ve got a new car, and you lost a slate in the last storm.” It’s lovely.’

  His accounts of his journey from rural Ireland to fame in his books have been laugh-out-loud funny, but also toe-curling in their honesty. But he says it’s important people in his position accurately document their lifestyles, even if it’s unpalatable to others.

  ‘I like the fact they have a frisson. But if someone read them and died of a heart attack, I’d be genuinely sorry.’ He’s delighted it’s much easier to be gay these days, but there’s bemusement too.

  He talks of meeting young gay men who want babies. ‘That wasn’t an option for me. I listen to them and think, “Good luck with that” because it isn’t easy. Adoption is difficult, and a surrogate, and IVF, is going to cost tens of thousands.’

  He’d make a great father, though. Has that ship sailed too? ‘Yes, I think it has. I reckon the ideal time would have been in my thirties, but then I was still a kid myself. Do I regret it? Regret is a very strong word. I kind of think you can’t go through life focusing on what you might have had, you have to focus on the here and now.’

  One does wonder what his own father would have made of Graham’s success. William Walker (Norton is Graham’s stage name) died from Parkinson’s in 2006. They had a traditional Irish father/son relationship (which mostly means the son phoning home and the father saying, ‘I’ll get your mother’).

  He talks today of his relief that his dad got to see ‘at least some of my success’ but also of his regret that they never got to develop the relationship that he now has with his mother. His father never said he was proud of him, but he knows he was, eventually.

  ‘I’d sent a bunch of flowers and apparently my dad had been telling the nurse they were from his son, and about how I was in the entertainment business and she might have heard of me. She said she had, and he must be so proud. He said he was very proud indeed. I’d never heard that before. It meant an awful lot.’

  So does he have any ambitions left? There is one ‘very, very big name’, a female star, who’s been secured for a pre-Christmas show, but he won’t give it away. ‘It’s someone I would have bet thousands of pounds wouldn’t do it, but she’s said yes.’

  Gosh. Who’s left? From his face, we’d have to guess the Queen. ‘Yes! We’re doing a Queen special,’ he giggles. ‘Wouldn’t that be something? Of course I’d definitely have to retire then. There’d be no following that.’

  The Graham Norton Show is on Fridays at 10.35pm on BBC1.

  Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3248906/Success-cost-dearly-Graham-Norton-s-pulling-biggest-names-TV-reveals-s-lot-sacrifices-reach-top.html#ixzz5AhRNcyZw
  Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

• Irish Times - https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/graham-norton-good-reviews-make-me-think-how-sh-t-did-you-think-it-would-be-1.2838808

  Graham Norton: Good reviews make me think ‘how sh*t did you think it would be’?
  She’d never done an interview before – what could go wrong when ‘Can’t Cope Won’t Cope’ writer Stefanie Preissner met the TV host?
  Thu, Nov 3, 2016, 06:00
  Stefanie Preissner
  7

  Stefanie Preissner’s selfie with Graham Norton in “The Merr”.
  Stefanie Preissner’s selfie with Graham Norton in “The Merr”.

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  When Sgt PJ Collins, the protagonist of Graham Norton’s new novel, Holding, unearths a body in Duneen, a backwater in Cork, it sets in motion a chain of events that alter his sheltered life forever. When I was asked to meet Graham in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin to interview him about Holding, I wondered if the same thing would happen to me. It’s not a funny book. Not even close. It’s an uncompromising, darkly comic and sometimes heartbreaking story that also happens to be the loneliest I’ve ever read. But then, I haven’t read as many books as I would like.

  I’d never interviewed someone before. In hindsight, I might have benefited from starting with someone more low-key. I didn’t even know how to go about it. I began by reading the book, which apparently sets me apart from most interviewers. Graham was actually very flattered that I was able to quote from his book. I instantly felt like a swot, I read his book with a pen and notebook, to be extra vigilant and to pick up on themes and issues. My main experience of reading books has been in an educational setting so I wasn’t really sure if I should talk to him about the general vision and viewpoints of Holding – loneliness and isolation – or do a comparative study with a similar text. Titles of Edna O’ Brien, John B Keane and Brian Friel sprang to mind, not necessarily because they’re similar to Holding but because my points of reference are limited and I already have a comparative essay on Friel and John B Keane from my junior cert so that’s handy.

  I was nervous about what to wear. What do you wear to meet a sassy gay icon? You know he’s going to notice. I watched a few YouTube clips of The Graham Norton Show and saw that he wore a silver blazer. I called up my cousin to see if I could borrow hers. Then I tweeted Graham to tell him that I was going to be wearing a silver blazer to the interview and wouldn’t it be funny if he wore the same thing.

  @StefPreissner: .@grahnort I’m wearing a silver blazer to our interview tomorrow in the hope that we match. I hope you see this. I have also sent a pigeon??

  He didn’t reply.

  Maybe he didn’t see it.

  Maybe he did and thought it pathetic.

  Maybe he doesn’t get to bring home his costume from The Graham Norton Show.

  Take it personally
  The morning of the interview, he still hadn’t replied to my tweet. And he had been tweeting Niall Horan so he had definitely been on twitter. I tried not to take it personally.

  I get to The Merr. I call it The Merr now because I’ve interviewed Graham Norton there for The Irish Times so I have notions. I’m 30 minutes early. The man with the top hat at the door doesn’t even ask me if he can help with anything because in my silver blazer I fit in so well. I take a seat and I order a coffee. I go over my notes and a butler pours my coffee for me. I’m not sure if they’re called butlers or waiters, but having someone pour my coffee felt strange. I wait another five minutes before texting the PR lady I’ve been liaising with to tell her I have arrived. I tell her where I am sitting. And that I am wearing a silver blazer.

  Sharon arrives and introduces herself. We walk to another part of the lounge and she tells me Graham is on his way. I have that feeling I had before English Paper 2. What if Patrick Kavanagh doesn’t come up? My general vision and viewpoints are getting blurry. She asks me about the details of my TV show Can’t Cope Won’t Cope because Graham has sent her to find out the basic plot. I give her the elevator pitch and tell her breezily that it’s available on the RTÉ Player.

  Graham walks down a glass corridor from the breakfast room. It’s less of a top-of-the-stairs-Titanic reveal and more like an airport arrivals hall. He’s wearing a navy checkered suit with an orange tie. I have an orange bomber jacket that would have matched. Not to worry. He is warm and welcoming and I somehow feel like I’m meeting Santa. He IS real. I KNEW IT.

  We sit down. Me on the couch, him on the chair. Sharon asks us if we want coffee. I look at Graham, forgetting that I have agency and an appetite of my own. He says yes. I follow suit and match his order. Graham and I make small talk about the biscuits on the table. He can’t identify their shape. They’re teacups, I tell him. They’re for having with tea. He laughs.

  While I’m aware that I am in the Merr to interview a man about a book so that it sells more copies, I also have my motives. What I really want to know is how he wrote it. Maybe one day I’ll write a novel. This is my chance to get Graham Norton’s Top Tips. Like painting cheap jewellery with nail varnish to avoid skin discolouration, this is my chance to download Norton’s Life Hacks.

  Did he sequester himself in a Martello tower with a typewriter by candlelight and eat only cheese until the novel was finished? No, in fact he “bagsed” free days to work on Holding whenever he had them. He spent the mornings of his writing days procrastinating with “nose-picking, dog walking and my Daily Mail sidebar of shame”. He says he would have lunch and then, fuelled by chicken and celebrity gossip, he would sit at his computer for four hours or so.

  Do our little dance
  Graham asks me about my process and we do our little dance. Graham is a natural interviewer. And I have done more press in the past month than Kim Kardashian so I slide right into it. “I do the opposite, Graham. I do the actual writing and then get tanked up on coffee and gossip – usually generated by my unrequited tweets or enthusiastic eyebrows”. It seems there’s no hacks to be downloaded from Graham Norton. He just worked hard, no gimmicks to get this book written. I ask him outright, “Are you happy with it?”

  He pauses. “Em…..” The pause is so sustained that if I were writing this interview scene into a TV show, this is where I would go to a commercial break. It’s a pause just pregnant enough to hook people so they come back with cups of tea after the break.

  “I am . . . in that . . . it’s a finished book. And when I was worrying about it a friend said a very good thing to me, he said, ‘If you finish it, it is one of the best books in the world because most novels are in drawers, most novels are 20,000 words and left to rot’ so the fact that I finished it is kind of a big thing.”

  Graham picks up the book and considers it for a minute. “I love the look of this book. I love how it feels. You know, it’s a first novel so when I am reading through it there are bits I am proud of.”

  In my head I imagine he is speaking about my favourite part of the book, one beautiful sentence. “She felt like she needed to anchor herself to something or she might fly around the room screaming out her pain like a hysterical balloon”.

  After a shorted pause, Graham adds.

  “But hopefully if I write another book, it’ll be better.”

  Then a life imitating art thing happens me. I expected this interview to be funny. I expected the book to be funny. Neither are. But what they lack in giggles they make up for in what appears to be genuine honesty and a keen understanding of the human condition. How’s that for a vision and viewpoint.

  Graham clarifies what could have been misconstrued as disappointment. “I’m not apologising for it. I wanted to write a ‘popular piece of fiction’, something accessible, that was an easy read. I mean, I think it was always going to be an easy read, because I don’t think I can write a difficult read.”

  I tell Graham that I found parts of Holding difficult. I ask him if this lonely, isolated story was bursting to come out of him forever, or if he had a different book in mind when he opened Microsoft Word to start.

  “Somewhere in the back of my mind the novel I was going to write was somewhere between The Bell Jar and Postcards from the Edge.

  I smile politely and nod, hoping he doesn’t ask me if I’ve read either of those books. He didn’t. But if he had, my answer was going to be ‘I’ve read the titles of both’.

  Personal demons purged
  He goes on to explain that he always thought he would write “a kind of smutty smart urban thing” but that two things happened. The first is that he wrote two memoirs and got all of his personal demons purged in those and secondly, he says “ I became 52 before I wrote the book and that’s not the novel you write at 52, it turns out. Those aren’t the things that interest you at 52.”

  So naturally I ask him if this loneliness and isolation is something that interests him. He says “kind of”.

  This was the point I realised that I’m probably a terrible interviewer. Based on my experience of being interviewed for Can’t Cope Won’t Cope I know how uncomfortable someone can get when a journalist delves into the darker corners of their personalities. I can tell there’s something there. So instead of digging in for the headline quote, I leave it.

  “Do you read reviews, Graham?”

  “I do, yeah”

  “Which ones do you think are the most astute?”

  “The really lovely ones, the really glowing ones, you kind of think... God! How sh*t did you think this book was going to be? And it hadn’t struck me, but I realised that was way to my advantage, that people assumed this book was going to be terrible. So the fact that it’s alright, elevated it in their minds to something quite good. It’s the slightly sniffy ones, of course, that I think are accurate. You’d be a weird person if you kind of sat back and said of your own work ‘Well, this is VERY good.’ So when people go ‘this bit’s good, that bit’s bad’ you think that’s a fair review.”

  Graham leans over at this point and admires my handwriting. I tell him the truth. I tell him I wrote my notes out again very neatly because I anticipated this very situation where he would see it. He smiles as me as you might smile at a group of school children waving at you from the back of a bus while you’re driving.

  Solving loneliness
  I tell him that I don’t want to psychoanalyse him based on his characters, because I hate when people do that to me with the TV show, but just as there are aspects of me in my characters, there has to be some of the loneliness of Duneen in him. I ask him if that sort of loneliness is something that can be solved with fibre broadband. Words like Facebook, Twitter and Tinder get bandied around. I ask him if he still dabbles in Tinder and if he’s still looking for The One.

  “Very little on Tinder now. And I don’t know if I am. A friend of mine, years ago, he had been single for a long time and someone said to him, do you enjoy being single and he said ‘Well apparently I do’. I think I’m maybe in that mode. Where, possibly, I prefer being single because if I didn’t, it’s odd that I’m single so long.”

  I pause and become a terrible interviewer again. I hate the feeling of exploiting a man’s personal life, remembering the feeling from just days before where I’d been in an interview and things had gone into a weird personal space I wished they hadn’t. My mind, in its awkwardness, jumps through the words writer, novel, single, lonely, loneliness, cats, dogs, DOGS. I REMEMBER HE HAS DOGS.

  “And, Graham, one of your dogs . . . is dying or sick or . . .”

  Great save Stefanie, draw attention to his dying companion. Graham quickly corrects me.

  “He’s old, he’s not ill. He’s fine.”

  Sharon comes to tell us we have just a few more minutes. I ask Graham if he will sign my copy of the book. Again he picks it up as though it’s a very delicate thing. I ask him if he’s going to write another.

  “I want to. I mean, no one has asked me to. But this one has sold, so presumably someone will go ‘Go on have another one’.”

  I tell him I’ve heard it’s been optioned for TV adaptation. He responds frankly.

  “As far as I know, every book that was ever written has been optioned by somebody. Just in case.”

  I ask him if he would be interested in writing the script adaptation, if it came to it.

  “I’ve gotten all the pleasure I’m going to get out of this book. My pleasure was sitting alone in my house with this book. I hope the book continues to give pleasure to other people but I’m donedy done. I’ve had it. I’ve sucked that thing dry. I’ve had my fun.”

  Graham and I share a smile. I tell him I tweeted him to tell him what I was wearing. I feign disappointment that he didn’t respond. Except between you and me, I wasn’t feigning. He tells me he’s ‘not good’ at twitter but he likes my blazer. I tell him I borrowed it just for him. He thinks that’s sweet.

  So, in the book, this sleepy town in Cork is just going through the motions until bones are unearthed and everything is open to change. It struck me that this book might be the ‘bones’ in Graham Norton’s life. Everything could change for him now, if he wants that. He has proven himself an admirable and capable writer, which is a credit that gets tacked on to the end of a long list of skills.

  I hover around the reception of The Merr. The man with the top hat smiles accommodatingly at me. I approach him as he takes shelter from the rain and the government buildings.

  “Am I meant to pay or...?”

  “Were you staying here?”

  “No, no I was interviewing Graham Norton but I had coffees”

  “I’m sure someone else will sort it. Was he funny?”

  “No. But he was brilliant.”

  Graham tweeted me that night to say it was nice to meet me.

  He still hasn’t followed me.

  Holding by Graham Norton is published by Hachette and is out now

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142.12 (July 1, 2017): p66+.
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* Culliton, Emily. The Misfortune of Marion Palm. Knopf. Aug. 2017. 304p. ISBN 9781524731908.
$24.95; ebk. ISBN 9781524731915. F
DEBUT Marion Palm's creative accounting skills are about to catch up with her, as the private school where
she works (and embezzles) has finally discovered that $180,000 is missing. Quirky and plain, Marion
resents her blue-collar background, surrounded as she is by more wealthy New Yorkers. Why shouldn't she
have nice things, too? Married to the clueless Nathan, a sometime poet, Marion has long realized that
Nathan's trust fund is not as generous as he thinks and has taken matters into her own hands. Now the
school board is onto her. She grabs the cash she has hidden in the basement of their Brooklyn brownstone
and runs, leaving Nathan to cope with their two daughters, Ginny and Jane, who are also students at the
school. But it's hard to get by on cash alone these days. Marion's misadventures don't take her much farther
than Coney Island, where she finds a surprising way out of her predicament in the sly conclusion to this
darkly funny story. This debut novel has what many others lack: a wicked sense of humor. VERDICT With
her mordant wit, deft plotting, and clever storytelling, Culliton is a young novelist to watch. [See Prepub
Alert, 2/27/17.]--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
* Dehe, Astrid & Achim Engstler. Eichmann's Executioner. New Pr. Jul. 2017. 224p. tr. from German by
Helen MacCormac & Alyson Coombes. ISBN 9781620973011. $23.95; ebk. ISBN 9781620973028. F
In 1960, agents of Mossad, the Israeli secret service, abducted Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and brought
him to Israel to stand trial for his part in the extermination of Jews during World War II. The Nazi official
had been charged with arranging the transport of Jews from European cities to the death camps in Poland.
Dehe, a journalist and translator, and Engstler, a university lecturer, both from Varel, Germany, present here
a fictional recounting of Eichmann's final days in prison and the part played by, among others, Shalom
Nagar, a prison guard who spent countless hours watching the prisoner and to whose lot it fell to execute
him. The tale moves back and forth between the trial and execution and Shalom's life years later on the
outskirts of Tel Aviv. Shalom tells his story to anyone who will listen, especially his good friends Moshe
and Ben, describing Eichmann's words and actions in minute detail. But with all this retelling, he comes to
doubt what actually happened. The weaving of past with present, fact with fiction brings Eichmann alive
and even humanizes him, a feat that impressively expands our understanding of the Holocaust. VERDICT
An admirably translated work, highly recommended for students of that tragedy and readers of historical
and literary fiction in general.--Edward B. Cone, New York
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Douglas, Marcia. The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: A Novel in Bass Riddim. Peepal Tree. Jul. 2017.
286p. photos. ISBN 9781845233327. pap. $18.95; ebk. ISBN 9781845233495. F
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and professor of Caribbean literature at the University of
Colorado, novelist/poet Douglas (Madam Fate) spares nothing here, offering her creative best. Accurately
described in the subtitle as written in "bass riddim," this novel fuses poems, song lyrics, remembrances, and
quotes to present Jamaica's history and colorful people. Leenah, a deaf woman, writes of the women in her
family and the bond between mother and daughter while also detailing her relationship with Bob Marley,
though she cannot hear his music. Meanwhile, a street boy named Delroy forms an intriguing friendship
with the town madman and a believably rendered fallen angel. By giving each character a distinctive voice
in a range of dialects, Douglas portrays life as many Jamaican people have experienced it while
simultaneously illuminating the intertwined relationships of Marley, Marcus Garvey, and Ethiopian
Emperor Haile Selassie. Also effective are the historic photographs and an appendix that offers more insight
into the leaders that influenced the religious and social climate of the nation. VERDICT Merging
verisimilitude and mysticism in the same way as Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River, this work will appeal
to readers of Caribbean literature and literary fiction generally.--Ashanti White, Fayetteville, NC
Fitch, Janet. The Revolution of Marina M. Little, Brown. Nov. 2017. 816p. ISBN 9780316022064. $30;
ebk. ISBN 9780316125772. F
Marking the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution comes Fitch's third adult novel. Can it achieve the
blockbuster status of her White Oleander and Paint It Black? Teenager Marina Makarova is blessed with
privilege and a talent for writing poetry. She hangs with literary futurists in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and
buys into their views of the failing tsarist regime. As successive governments crumble and the German war
machine advances, she lives in the heart of the city's collapse. Her survival instincts pushed to just short of
death, she finds her inner shapeshifter and wriggles out of trouble to fight another day. In the sweep and heft
of her tribute to St. Petersburg's suffering during the years 1916-19, Fitch captures the epic grandeur of
Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, situating her characters in the pages of authentic history. Yet she also infuses
her protagonists with transgressive sexual sive sexual energy a la E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey, vividly
portraying 16-year-old Marina's sexual awakenings as she falls in and out of love. As a college student,
Fitch concentrated on Russian studies, and she treats the facts with a historian's respect. Especially well
done is the story line dealing with the vicious Cheka, the Soviet secret police. VERDICT Readers of
Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, and Margaret Mitchell will thrill to this narrative of women in love during the
cataclysm of war. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA
* Follett, Ken. A Column of Fire. Viking. (Pillars of the Earth, Bk. 3). Sept. 2017. 928p. ISBN
9780525954972. $36; ebk. ISBN 9780735224476. F
This third volume in Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" series takes place in the 16th century, approximately 200
years after the events of World Without End. Though it opens in the English town of Kingsbridge, where the
first two books took place, Follett takes advantage of the period's zest for exploration and situates his cast of
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thousands all over the known world; from England to France, Spain, and beyond. Following the plague
years, it was a time of great upheaval in Europe as a middle class began to rise and people became
disenchanted with both the ruling class and the church. Then came the Protestant Reformation. At the heart
of this great novel is Ned Willard, who wants desperately to marry Margery Fitzgerald, but their religious
differences force the pragmatic Ned, who is Catholic, to throw his lot in with the young Queen Elizabeth
while Margery risks her life to help spread the Protestant faith. Several climactic scenes--including a truly
horrific execution and massacres in the streets of Paris--dramatize the vast social and religious divide of the
era. VERDICT Though a few notes may be needed to help keep the characters straight, Follett has written
another masterly historical novel that will keep readers enthralled well past bedtime.--Jane Henriksen Baird,
Anchorage P.L., AK
Grant, Sofia. The Dress in the Window. Morrow. Jul. 2017. 368p. ISBN 9780062499721. pap. $15.99; ebk.
ISBN 9780062499738. F
For Peggy, a war widow and young mother, life is rather grim in the post--World War II former mill town
outside of Philadelphia. Her sister Jeanne's fiance was killed in battle, and their mother, Thelma, has
brought both daughters back into her home. Fortunately, Peggy has a great eye for fashion, while talented
seamstress Jeanne conjures up nearly any dress Peggy illustrates. With their combined artistry, the sisters
bring in a few extra dollars, but when the more ambitious Peggy positively responds to an encouraging
offer, their lives veer in different directions. Then Peggy, displaying questionable judgment, allows herself
to be drawn into illegal activities. This novel by Grant, who also writes as Sophie Littlefield (Garden of
Stones; A Bad Day for Sorry) is a bit all over the place; its first half offers a lovely look at the bond
between sisters as they struggle to get by in tough times, while the second takes on an entirely different feel
as suspense and intrigue propel the story line into warp speed. VERDICT Readers who enjoy plots offering
strong family relationships, artistic creativity, and enterprising business schemes will relish this portrait of
mid-century America, despite a few historical inaccuracies (the mention of refrigerator ice makers and
shopping malls, both of which didn't develop until after 1953).--Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA
* Gross, Andrew. The Saboteur. Minotaur: St. Martin's. Aug. 2017. 416p. ISBN 9781250079510. $27.99;
ebk. ISBN 9781466892170. F
Gross's second stand-alone World War II novel (after The One Man) opens in Norway 1942. Kurt
Nordstrum is a man without an army but still doing all he can to thwart the Nazis and their puppet
government that has overtaken his country. He is asked by a trusted friend to smuggle microfilm to the
British with intelligence on what is really going on at the Norsk Hydro plant. This intel could change the
course of the war. Nordstrum hijacks a civilian ship and, after a tense air chase by Nazis, is able to get the
microfilm to Aberdeen. Thus begins a plan of attack to destroy the heavy water being produced at the plant
that could give Germany the option for nuclear war. Can Kurt and his team successfully sabotage the plant
before the Nazis develop the capability to bring the world to its knees? From its opening pages, Gross's
novel grips readers as they follow the tough-minded and persistent Nordstrum every step of the way.
VERDICT Highly recommended for thriller fans as well as lovers of historical fiction based on true events.
[See Prepub Alert. 3/13/17.]--Susan Moritz, Silver Spring, MD
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. Gravel Heart. Bloomsbury USA. Aug. 2017. 272p. ISBN 9781632868138. $28; ebk.
ISBN 9781408881316. F
At the core of this novel by Gurnah (By the Sea and Paradise) is a family secret that young Salim must
discover in order to be at peace with himself. Every afternoon, his mother asks him to take a basket of food
to his father, who lives as an impoverished recluse in a shopkeeper's back room a short distance away and
mutters only a word of thanks for the meal. Salim's mother refuses to answer her son's questions about this
family situation. Years later, Salim attends university in London, eventually returning home to Zanzibar and
visiting his father in the same hovel where he last saw him. Over the course of several days, Salim's father
finally confides to his son the dark secret that keeps him estranged from his wife and children. Without
sentimentality, the author imparts an affecting story of isolation, the search for identity, and loneliness at
home, as well as in the large, hostile capital of a foreign nation where Salim is clearly not wanted.
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VERDICT Though it would have benefited from some tightening to make the narrative to flow more
smoothly, this novel is ultimately compelling, drawing the reader directly into the life of young Salim and
his pursuit of answers and understanding. [See Prepub Alert, 2/13/17.]--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia
Community P.L., OH
Hay, Ashley. The Body in the Clouds. Washington Square: S. & S. Jul. 2017. 320p. ISBN 9781501165115.
pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9781501165122. F
The themes of discovery, dreams, and destiny are represented in three story lines in this sophomore effort
from Hay (after The Railwayman's Wife). An astronomer in the 1700s, a bridge worker in the 1930s, and a
drifter traveling from England back to Australia all witnessed a man filling from the sky and surviving.
Each person is awestruck by progress and exploration, by humanity's steady striving to reach new heights.
This prominent motif is symbolized as the characters, all of whom do a lot of internal contemplation, ascend
Ferris wheels, bridges, and planes. Hay's writing is profusely poetical and lavishly descriptive, and her pace
floats along leisurely. VERDICT Stylistically similar to Annie Dillard and Marilynne Robinson, Hay
weaves three gossamer plot threads into a delicately airy, translucent whole in which the ideas outweigh
story and character development. All the better for transcending the human state and turning a gaze up
toward the clouds.--Sonia Reppe, Stickney-Forest View P.L., IL
Hewitt, Kate. A Mother Like Mine. Berkley. (Hartley-by-the-Sea, Bk. 3). Aug. 2017. 384p. ISBN
9780399583797. pap. $15; ebk. ISBN 9780399583803. F
The third volume in Hewitt's "Hartley-by-the-Sea" series (after Rainy Day Sisters and Now and Then
Friends), this novel focuses on relationships between mothers and daughters. Abby Rhodes has returned to
the small village in England's Lake District where she grew up, and to her grandmother, who raised her.
She's brought along her young son, and her plan is to help her grandmother run their family cafe. But into
this seemingly perfect setup comes Laura, Abby's estranged mother, who now plans to stay in Hartley-bythe-Sea
permanently. Laura is seeking a reconciliation, and after many ups and downs, including death and
disasters, this family finds some common ground to stand on to look toward the future. Hewitt is prolific,
with over 40 novels published, and it shows in her ability to construct a solid story and maintain related
characters across books. While somewhat predictable, the plot here is eventful, and the conclusion is
emotionally satisfying. VERDICT This English family saga should appeal to readers of Joanna Trollope or
early Jojo Moves.--Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.
* Huber, Laurel Davis. The Velveteen Daughter. She Writes. Jul. 2017. 300p. ISBN 9781631521928. pap.
$16.95; ebk. ISBN 9781631521935. F
DEBUT It doesn't take long for author Margery Williams and Italian husband Francesco Bianco to realize
that their daughter, Pamela Bianco, is a child prodigy. In 1921, when Pamela is 14, the New York art world
goes mad for her debut exhibition of delicately etched works. Margery soon shares the limelight with her
daughter when her beloved children's classic, The Velveteen Rabbit, is published in 1922. Behind the
scenes, Pamela fights mental illness for much of her life, a battle triggered by her unrequited love for
Diccon, aka author Richard Hughes (A High Wind in Jamaica), and pressure from her father to focus on
greater works of art and abandon the children's illustrations she loves. (A joint mother/daughter book, The
Skin Horse, was published in 1927.) The alternating narratives, told over the course of 33 years and
enhanced by photographs and pictures of Pamela's work, is a masterpiece. In a story as exquisitely wrought
as Pamela's intricate line drawings, debut novelist Huber brings to life the challenges of childhood genius,
the glittering world of the creative arts in the decades leading up to World War II and beyond, the
devastation of mental illness, and the power of unwavering parental love. VERDICT Incandescent, pitchperfect,
and destined for greatness.--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
* Jemc, Jac. The Grip of It. Farrar. Aug. 2017. 288p. ISBN 9780374536916. pap. $15; ebk. ISBN
9780374716073. F
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As reward for our labors, we expect home to provide sanctuary, comfort, and familiarity. Despite
ambiguous town chatter regarding the strange, apparently tragic history of their new home, James and Julie
settle in, concerned only by elderly neighbor Rolf's voyeurism. Day by day, though, the house consumes
their attention and nerves: odd-sized "secret spaces"--as difficult to enter as exit--are discovered. Molds and
stains appear at once patterned and discontinuous. A sporadic humming tone, not always heard by both, is
unfindable. Are the woods growing closer or receding? Is someone getting into the house and moving
things around? Even the clock can't be trusted, with bizarre dilations and compressions of time. The
marriage, previously troubled by James's gambling, suffers, but the couple vow solidarity. The secondperson
point of view charges the narrative with jagged energy, and in the end, we learn that people are more
haunted than any house. Jemc (My Only Wife; A Different Bed Every Time) reconfigures the hauntedhouse
story to reflect current anxieties and their violation of formerly intimate spaces and relationships.
VERDICT For connoisseurs of the "new weird" and literary/psychological horror a la Mark Z.
Danielewski's House of Leaves and Marisha Pessl's Night Film. [See Prepub Alert, 2/20/17.]--William
Grabowski, McMechen, WV
Kahn, Michael A. Played! Poisoned Pen. Jul. 2017. 240p. ISBN 9781464208362. pap. $15.95. F
Kahn, perhaps best known for his "Rachel Gold" mysteries, steps up to the plate with this stand-alone legal
thriller introducing corporate lawyer Milton Bernstein, who suddenly finds himself in the position of
defense attorney when his younger brother Hal is charged with kidnapping and murder. It is Hal's college
baseball career that was cut short by injury before he could turn pro that provides the title's double meaning
in the face of Hal's claim that he was framed. (Unfortunately, those who may expect stronger ties to
America's No. 1 pastime, particularly from a novel set in St. Louis, will be sorely disappointed.) Short
chapters quickly move the plot from Hal's first encounters with Cherry Pitt, his alleged victim, through their
brief romantic entanglement to her violent death. Along the way, other key players are introduced, as
Milton's transformation from legal nerd to wisecracking sleuth is completed. VERDICT Fans of quick reads
like James Patterson's popular "BookShots" series will be well served by this thriller's fast pace.--Nancy
McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT
Kent, Hannah. The Good People. Little, Brown. Sept. 2017. 400p. ISBN 9780316243964. $27; ebk. ISBN
9780316243933. F
Set in an Irish village in the 1820s, Kent's harrowing second novel (after Burial Rites) immerses readers in a
time and place where folk superstitions mingle with daily life. Though nominally Catholic, the village
residents blame fairies, or "the Good People," when any misfortune strikes, be it a stillborn child or poor
milk production. After Nora Leahy's husband dies unexpectedly, she is left alone to care for her severely
disabled grandson, Micheal. Nora comes to believe that Micheal is a changeling, and with the help of her
maid Mary and the local folk healer Nance Roche, imposes a series of increasingly cruel "cures" on
Micheal. Kent skillfully depicts a world where anything outside the norm falls under suspicion, particularly
women who are not under the protection of a man. To varying degrees, the three central women of the book
represent this victimization, which helps bring sympathy to them, despite their terrible actions. VERDICT
The lack of understanding of disability leads Micheal to be dehumanized, even by his own grandmother,
and his treatment is painful to read. Nevertheless, this work is a worthy contribution to literary collections,
particularly those at the intersection of feminism, religion, and folklore. [See Prepub Alert. 3/27/17.]--
Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
* Krauss, Nicole. Forest Dark. Harper. Sept. 2017. 304p. ISBN 9780062430991. $27.99; ebk. ISBN
9780062431011. F
In her complex new novel, National Book Award finalist Krauss (The Great House) suggests why it's been
seven years since fans have heard from her. As depicted here, the writer's life, one of isolation, even
selfishness, is the opposite of society's norms, and Krauss looks to Franz Kafka, Jewish scholars, and the
Bible to examine the writer's responsibility to self and to history. At the heart of the story are two
characters, secular Jews in the throes of transformation, shedding their pasts but unsure about their futures.
At 68, Jules Epstein, a larger-than-life millionaire businessman and collector of beautiful things, is
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lightening his load. Divesting himself of wealth and possessions, he travels to the Hilton in Tel Aviv, Israel,
to meet with potential recipients of his generosity. Our first-person narrator was actually conceived at the
hotel and often returns there, in this case to escape the confines of home and begin a novel. Each character
falls under the intrusive spell of strangers who act as guides through the dense, dark forests of Jewish
mysticism and literary theory. Will their two lives collide? VERDICT Wildly imaginative, darkly
humorous, and deeply personal, this novel seems to question the very nature of time and space. Krauss
commands our attention, and serious readers will applaud. [See Prepub Alert, 3/8/17.]--Sally Bissell,
formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
* Lapena, Shari. A Stranger in the House. Pamela Dorman: Viking. Aug. 2017. 320p. ISBN
9780735221123. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780735221147. F
When Tom Krupp comes home from work, his wife's car is gone, but the front door is unlocked and it's
clear that Karen has been preparing dinner in the kitchen. Most troubling of all, her purse and cell phone are
still in the house. As he tries to understand what's happening, the police arrive to announce that Karen has
been in an accident. He rushes to his wife's side in the hospital, but she can't remember the accident, nor
why she left the house or where she went. The police are suspicious, Tom struggles with his own doubts,
and Karen's best friend seems to be the only one who really believes her. Tension builds and relationships
threaten to fall apart as Karen and Tom try to piece together what happened that night and what it means for
their future, if they even have one. VERDICT The author of the acclaimed The Couple Next Door has
written another fast-paced, engrossing psychological thriller that will have readers guessing until the very
end. [See Prepub Alert, 2/20/17.]--Cynthia Price, Francis Marion Univ. Lib., Florence, SC
Lynch, Paul. Grace. Little, Brown. Jul. 2017. 368p. ISBN 9780316316309. $26; ebk. ISBN
9780316316293. F
When 14-year-old Grace Coyle's mother hacks off her daughter's long hair, Grace cannot imagine what is in
store for her over the next five years. Cast from her home and urged to disguise herself as a boy in order to
survive the looming Irish famine, Grace finds her prospects going from bad to worse when her tag-along
younger brother Colly is snatched away by a roaring river. She does her best, joining a cattle drive, then
pounding out long hours as part of a motley road crew, but misery and danger follow her every turn. The
voice of Colly is ever-present, poking her with riddles and warnings and nearly driving her mad. Lynch's
(The Black Snow) prose is unduly complicated at first. The writing becomes more direct and lyrical toward
the middle, then degenerates to stream-of-consciousness as Grace nearly succumbs to hunger. Readers who
enjoy a challenge and a smattering of Gaelic will be enthralled, as long as their tolerance for violence and
gritty language is also high. VERDICT Similar in theme and tone to Laird Hunt's Neverhome but set during
the Irish potato famine instead of the American
Civil War, this novel is bleak and unsparing yet often mesmerizing.--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib.
Syst., Bellingham, WA
* McCormack, Mike. Solar Bones. Soho. Sept. 2017. 224p. ISBN 9781616958534. $25; ebk. ISBN
9781616958541. F
As the Angelus tolls on All Soul's Day, Marcus Conway's ghost visits the house that he shared with his
family in Louis-burgh, County Mayo, Ireland. There, he reassembles the facts of his earthly existence from
memory. An engineer in life, Marcus delights in the forms and structures, both natural and human made,
that shape our existence. For our protagonist, life's dark comedy arises from the habit of being mystified by
existence despite being defined by structure, from the stunning natural features of County Mayo's coastlines
and hills, Louisburgh's buildings and thoroughfares, to the bones, tissues, and fluids that to varying degrees
make up earthly life. The arrangement of a sandwich on a plate delights Marcus as much as a wind turbine
does, and much of his afterlife musings consider how human factors such as politics and property
compromise potentially perfect designs. McCormack's third novel (after Notes from a Coma, shortlisted for
the Irish Book of the Year Award) exhibits his startling imagination and humor as well as a measured
narrative style that departs from the more rapid delivery characteristic of his earlier prose. VERDICT
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Widely praised, this book is a brilliant tour de force. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]--John G. Matthews,
Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
* Moriarty, Sarah. North Haven. Little A: Amazon. Jun. 2017. 300p. ISBN 9781503941519. $24.95; pap.
ISBN 9781503941526. $14.95. F
DEBUT Moriarty's debut is a heartfelt portrayal of four siblings, who arrive for the Fourth of July holiday
at their Maine lake house. This summer ritual will be different. It's a sobering time for Tom, Gwen, Libby,
and Danny. Their parents have passed away, and developers are offering grand sums for their house. Unable
to afford repairs, the heirs still cling to the house that holds family memories, many unpleasant. Over the
holiday, they disclose past secrets and current personal struggles that influence their decision to sell or not.
Tom, the oldest, is a lawyer on temporary work leave and on the verge of divorce. Gwen is an artist, a wild
child happily pregnant with no husband. Libby, a preschool teacher, the family organizer, tells her siblings
that she can no longer keep her partner Patricia out of the family circle. The youngest, Danny, unbeknownst
to anyone, has dropped out of college and leads an aimless, depressed existence. Long-held secrets affect a
family powerless to give up a house that has become a ghost from another era. VERDICT A gifted author
of singular talent, Moriarty has captured the unbearable rifts of a family under emotional stress. A
magnificent debut.--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
* Norton, Graham. Holding. Atria. Aug. 2017. 272p. ISBN 9781501173264. $25; ebk. ISBN
9781501173288. F
DEBUT Norton's first novel is a thoroughly enjoyable cozy mystery set in the Irish village of Duneen. Life
there is fairly dull, enlivened only by gossip, until the day human bones are unearthed on an old farm--
possibly the remains of Tommy Burke, who disappeared 26 years ago. Sgt. PJ Collins finally has a real
criminal case. He even has two prime suspects in Brid Riordan, Tommy's former fiancee, and Evelyn Ross,
who believes herself to be Tommy's one true love. But PJ does not expect is to echo that old love triangle
when his investigation sparks a bit of romance with his suspects. As PJ endeavors to solve the case, dark
secrets and tragedies of the past are uncovered, changing life in Duneen forever. British comedian Norton is
particularly skilled at conveying the essence of his characters, making the reader truly care about them. The
village of Duneen seems so real that you can almost hear the Irish lilt, taste the tea always on offer, and
smell the fresh country air. VERDICT Fans of the cozy mysteries of Alan Bradley and Alexander McCall
Smith will love this debut by The Graham Norton Show star and clamor for more tales of Duneen.--Barbara
Clark-Greene, Westerly, RI
Pearl, Nancy. George and Lizzie. Touchstone. Sept. 2017. 288p. ISBN 9781501162893. $25; ebk. ISBN
9781501162916. F
DEBUT Lizzie grew up with a mother and father who were academics and had little interest in parenting
their daughter. Perhaps as a result of a lack of adult guidance and influence, she engaged in self-destructive
behavior as a high school senior, which she later regretted. George grew up with attentive parents and was
part of a loving family in which he enthusiastically participated. When George and Lizzie meet as students
at the University of Michigan, George falls for Lizzie, and Lizzie--who can't stop pining for her exboyfriend--halfheartedly
goes along with the relationship. In the pre-Internet era, in which the novel is set,
Lizzie spends an inordinate amount of time searching for her lost love in phone books wherever she could
find them. This behavior essentially keeps her from being fully present with George as their relationship
grows increasingly serious, and it becomes more possible that he will discover her obsession. VERDICT
With eccentric characters, relationship drama, and a vivid sense of place, this Anne Tyler-esque debut novel
is sure to interest and please Pearl's many fans. [See Prepub Alert, 3/27/17.]--Karen Core, Detroit P.L.
Pessoa, Fernando. The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition. New Directions. Aug. 2017. 608p. ed. by
Jeronimo Pizarro. tr. from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. ISBN 9780811226936. $24.95. F
Born in Lisbon but schooled in South Africa, Pessoa (1888-1935) was a prolific modernist poet/aphorist
famous for the staggering number of pseudonyms he used to express his various facets. First published in
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Portuguese in 1982 and once called the "solitary person's Bible," this diary-like meditation on major
questions has been translated into English four times since 1991. Although its desultory thoughts have been
variously organized by different editors, it is only in this edition, for the first time, that the pieces are
presented chronologically, including those written before 1920. "What do I care if no one reads what I
write? I write to distract myself from living, and I publish because those are the rules of the game," says the
text. But in actuality, the manuscript, as well as most of Pessoa's work, languished in a trunk after his death-he
hardly published anything while alive. Thus, much of what he writes is contradictory, but the originality
of his expression easily deflects accusations of self-indulgence: "I asked for so little from life and life
denied me even that." VERDICT Pessoa may have been a reclusive bookkeeper who lived most of his life
in a single room, but in this work, he offers contemplative readers a veritable "thought banquet."--Jack
Shreve, Chicago
Platzer, Brian. Bed-Stuy Is Burning. Atria. Jul. 2017. 336p. ISBN 9781501146954. $26; ebk. ISBN
9781501146978. F
DEBUT the front lines of gentrification, income disparity, and racial tension in New York City comes this
dramatic first novel that imagines a riot and its aftermath told by those involved on all sides. Aaron is a
former rabbi and now successful Wall Street trader who owns a mansion in Bed-ford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn,
with Amelia, a writer, and their infant son. A neighborhood youth has recently been killed by police,
tensions are escalating, and when more young people are arrested, a mob forms and targets the nicest
houses that are owned by white outsiders, ending up at Aaron's place while he is not there. Several people
are shot, and the mob is attacking the house as Amelia and Antoinette, their nanny, are locked inside,
incommunicado. Multiple story threads converge as a standoff takes place on Aaron's front porch.
VERDICT The author effectively creates a tense, realistic situation, and although some of the multiple
narrators are occasionally long-winded, the prose is energetic, and Platzer is obviously committed to
exploring these contemporary urban issues.--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Read, Warren. Ash Falls. Ig. Jul. 2017. 306p. ISBN 9781632460479. pap. $16.95; ebk ISBN
9781632460486. F
DEBUT Set in autumn during the 1980s, this novel portrays the physical and psychological toll of being
imprisoned and the attendant hope of being released. When a van driver has a heart attack during a routine
prisoner transfer, convicted murderer Ernie Luntz escapes, placing his hometown of Ash Falls, WA, on
edge. The anticipation of his return stirs up much unfinished business among those he left behind. For
Ernie's wife, Bobbie, and gay son, Patrick, it means reconciling their love for Ernie with their hatred of his
crime. For Hank Kelleher, a former high school history teacher-turned-reclusive marijuana dealer, it means
facing up to the consequences of his affair with Bobbie, the high school nurse. For Marcelle Henry, married
young to town bad boy Eugene Henry, whose taunts incited the crime that sent Ernie to jail, it means
confronting a bad marriage and an unexpected pregnancy. VERDICT Though set in a bleak place at a bleak
time, Read's novel ultimately is one of hope. As it winds to its conclusion, each character finds a key to
closing the self-created distance between who they are and who they'd like to be, culminating in an
extraordinary Christmas Eve act of love. Most readers will enjoy.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA
Rogneby, Jenny. Leona: The Die Is Cast. Other. Aug. 2017. 464p. ISBN 9781590518823. pap. $16.95; ebk
ISBN 9781590518830. F
DEBUT A naked and bloody seven-year-old girl enters a Stockholm bank and gets away with millions of
kronor. When no trace of the girl or the money is found, the case falls to Leona Lindberg, a detective in the
Violent Crimes Division with a distinguished record and prickly personality. Hounded by the media and her
bosses to close the case, Leona appears to have no leads even as the child robs another bank. Early on, the
reader learns the identity of the mastermind behind the thefts, and the story line then focuses on how far
Leona will go to cover up these crimes. What was devised as a simple get-rich-quick scheme quickly grows
out of hand as Leona tries to redirect the blame to anyone who gets too close to the truth. Leona is a true
antihero with few if any redeeming qualities beyond her unexpected but rarely expressed love for her
children. Readers who enjoy rooting for the bad guy may find their match in Leona, who is reminiscent of
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Jeff Lindsay's serial killer hero Dexter but less likable. VERDICT Making her fiction debut, Swedish
criminologist Rogneby has written an unusual and compelling crime novel with a few too many
unbelievable plot twists and convenient coincidences to be wholly satisfying. [Library marketing.]--Portia
Kapraun, Delphi P.L., IN
Rose, Augustus. The Readymade Thief. Viking. Aug. 2017. 384p. ISBN 9780735221833. $26; ebk. ISBN
9780735221857. F
DEBUT It's a bit of a challenge to describe this first novel, which feels a little like David Mitchell wrote
The Da Vinci Code and mixed in a bit from Vanessa Diffenbaugh's The Language of Flowers. Seventeenyear-old
Lee Cuddy would probably be the first to tell you that she's no model kid. She steals, sells drugs,
and has had more than her fair share of run-ins with the police. Still, she has good grades and plans for the
future, including college with her best friend Edie. But when Lee takes the fall tor a drug deal gone bad, her
college plans evaporate and she finds herself homeless and on the run from both the law and a shady
underground organization that believes she possesses something of great importance. Enter Tomi, a gifted
hacker, who takes Lee under his wing and introduces her to urban exploration and the art world, all while
evading those who pursue them. Rose has created an excellent twisty plot set against a richly textured
backdrop, but his characters feel a bit sketched. We don't get to know Lee particularly well, and the people
around her feel a bit like foils to help move the story along. But what a story it is! VERDICT Give this one
to readers looking for an unputdown-able literary summer escape. [See Prepub Alert, 2/20/17.]--Liz
Kirchhoff, Barrington Area Lib., IL
Sternbergh, Adam. The Blinds. Ecco: HarperCollins. Aug. 2017. 304p. ISBN 9780062661340. $26.99; ebk.
ISBN 9780062661364. F
Cal Cooper is the sheriff of the small Texas town of Caesura. Except his real name isn't Cal Cooper, and
everyone calls the town the Blinds. Cal doesn't know his real name, and neither do any of the other 50-odd
people in town. They are all the result of a new procedure that can erase specific-memories, and the
government has found this to be useful for both criminals who have a made a deal and witnesses who would
be in danger out in the world. It's the next generation of witness protection; if you don't know what it is that
makes you dangerous, you can't reveal it and give yourself away. Things in the Blinds are quiet until the
suicide and then murder. Cal and his deputies have to investigate a crime where anyone might have a
motive and the skills to carry it out. The arrivals of agents from the outside with their own agenda add to the
complexity and peril. VERDICT Fans of Sternbergh's earlier works (Shovel Ready; Near Enemy) will enjoy
this story's clever premise, complex characters, and fast pace. Readers looking for a different kind of thriller
with many twists and an explosive climax will also find much to relish. [See Prepub Alert, 2/20/17.]--Dan
Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green
Stewart, Amy. Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions. Houghton Harcourt. (Kopp Sisters, Bk. 3). Sept. 2017.
384p. ISBN 9780544409996. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780544409637. F
In this third installment featuring the Kopp sisters (Girl Waits with Gun; Lady Cop Makes Trouble), it is
1916, and Constance Kopp, a deputy sheriff in Hack-ensack, NJ, fields cases related to morality charges
against women. Quick to accumulate and tough to disprove, these charges fill the jails with women who
lack the resources to defend themselves. The first woman suspected of waywardness is Edna Heustis, whom
Deputy Kopp cleverly advocates for. Her second case involves Minnie Davis, whose morality charges aren't
as easy to investigate, or dismiss. As Constance works these cases, her home life is disrupted when sister
Fleurette auditions for May Ward's touring dance troupe, which regularly faces its own morality scandals.
Newspaper reporter Carrie Hart, a friend of the Kopp sisters, chronicles these adventures with sympathetic
wit and humor. The cases here are based on the experiences of real women, a technique that Stewart has
employed in previous volumes. Collectively, the story lines intersect to create an intriguing window into
women's rights and the social mores that women challenged on the eve of World War I. VERDICT A lovely
addition for series fans and aficionados of historical fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 3/27/17.]--Tina Panik, Avon
Free P.L., CT
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Tunnicliffe, Hannah. A French Wedding. Doubleday. Jun. 2017. 320p. ISBN 9780385541848. $25.95; ebk.
ISBN 9780385541855. F
Tunnicliffe's (The Color of Tea; Season of Salt and Honey) latest offering whisks readers off to the coast of
France, where fading rock star Max is about to turn 40. He is gathering his oldest college friends for a
birthday weekend, with the ulterior motive of confessing his love to best friend Helen. Enter Juliette, Max's
new private chef. Having just suffered a nasty breakup, given up her restaurant in Paris, and moved home to
be with her ailing parents, Juliette needs the distraction of cooking to start fresh. But over the course of
Max's birthday weekend, old grudges come to light, emotions erupt, and nothing will ever be the same.
While the prolog is a little heavy-handed, readers should persevere, as the first chapter will sweep them up
and not let go until the last word. The author's style is lyrical and soothing. Juliette is as charming and
endearing a voice as one is likely to find. VERDICT Lovers of France, food, friendship, and romance will
absolutely devour this new gem of a novel.--Kristen Droesch, Div. of Libs. UX Dept.. New York Univ.
* Williams, David. When the English Fall. Algonquin. Jul. 2017. 256p. ISBN 9781616205225. $24.95; ebk.
ISBN 9781616207083. F
DEBUT When a solar storm destroys anything electronic, Jacob, his family, and his Amish community are,
at first, unaffected. However, as more news trickles out about the ever-increasing desperation ot the English
(whom the Amish term non-Amish) as modern civilization collapses, two worlds are set to collide. When
this collision culminates in increased violence, how will one society survive? This postapocalyptic tale is
narrated as a series of diary entries from the point of view of Jacob, an Amish farmer. This format is
different in that it allows most of the action associated with such novels to take place offstage, thereby
heightening the tension when things come to a head. In addition, this perspective provides more
introspective focus, allowing the author to expound on philosophical, and indeed theological, crossroads
that are likely to appear if something like this were to happen. VERDICT Making his fiction debut,
Williams (The Strawberry Church) has written a quiet, ideas-focused dystopian novel that will stay with
readers long after they have turned the final page. [A July LibraryReads Pick.]--Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins,
CO
Wilson, Andrew. A Talent for Murder. Atria. Jul. 2017. 320p. ISBN 9781501145063. $26; ebk. ISBN
9781501145087. F
Just before Christmas 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. Upon reappearing, she refused to
disclose where she was or what happened, citing amnesia. Wilson's (The Lying Tongue) new novel
reinterprets these mysterious events. Agatha's husband, Colonel Christie, has been having an affair and
wants a divorce, her mother has recently passed away, and the crime novelist has lost her inspiration to
write. Depressed and vulnerable, Agatha is approached by Dr. Kurs and blackmailed into an insidious
scheme. Soon the young author's disappearance is making headlines and her picture is in the papers. But
does her ability to pen detective fiction provide her with enough experience to get away with murder?
Wilson's "what if" story is equal parts psychological thriller, detective fiction, and mystery. Readers will
become emotionally involved with the protagonist, whom Wilson portrays as both sympathetic and quick
witted, even at her lowest points. VERDICT Those who enjoy fiction and detective fiction (including Dame
Agatha's own writings) will delight in this singular take on a strange event in Christie's life.--Jennifer Funk,
McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL
Wiseman, Ellen Marie. The Life She Was Given. Kensington. Aug. 2017. 304p. ISBN 9781617734496.
pap. $15; ebk. ISBN 9781617734502. F
Nine-year-old Lilly Blackwood has spent her entire life in the attic of her parents' house. Her mother, a
religious fanatic, views Lilly as an "abomination." Her seemingly loving father gives her presents yet keeps
her imprisoned. Lilly cannot understand why she is hidden away until one day in 1931 when her mother
sells her to a traveling circus. The homesick child, an albino, is violently beaten and forced into the
sideshow. Yet among the circus folk, she will find kindness and even love. Twenty-five years later, 18-yearold
Julia Blackwood has inherited the family home and horse farm, having run away from her cold
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controlling mother in the wake of her alcoholic father's death. Blackwood Manor had always been full of
secrets and locked rooms. Now Julia will discover the depths of her family's cruelty. Switching back and
forth in time and narration from Lilly to Julia, Wiseman (The Plum Tree) has crafted a can't-put-it-down
novel of family secrets involving two young girls who only seek to be loved. VERDICT Perfect for book
clubs and readers who admired Sara Gruen's Like Water for Elephants.--Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L.,
MA
Woods, Eva. Something Like Happy. Graydon House. Sept. 2017. 400p. ISBN 9781525811357. $26.99;
ebk. ISBN 9781488026072. F
Annie is miserable. Her dead-end job is soul-destroying, she's lonely, and her mother has early-onset
dementia. When hospital administrative details get difficult, she's close to a tearful, angry meltdown. That's
when Polly steps into her life. Polly has problems of her own, terminal cancer to be exact, but she's the life
of the hospital. At first, this new friend is more than a little too upbeat--what's so great about being on the
brink of death?--but as time goes on, the friendship helps Annie to move on from a tragedy in her past and
find happiness again. Readers who dislike feel-good, inspirational illness stories will have to be encouraged
to get past the book's start, which feels like the introduction to another "isn't cancer a fabulous journey" tale.
Those who persevere will see that Annie and Polly are wiser than all that and will enjoy their sometimes
hilarious antics that show what love's really about. VERDICT Woods (aka crime author Claire McGowan)
is a great option for fans of Graeme Simsion, Gabrielle Zevin, and Marian Keyes. [See Prepub Alert,
5/9/17.]--Henrietta Verma, National Information Standards Organization, Baltimore
SHORT STORIES
Obejas, Achy. The Tower of the Antilles. Akashic. Jul. 2017. 150p. ISBN 9781617755392. $19.95; ebk.
ISBN 9781617755538. F
The stories in this new collection from prolific Cuban American author and translator Obejas read more like
records or testimonies than traditional narratives, and they're tied together by the ennui and hopelessness of
the characters, with the author offering no conclusions. For narrator Dulce, "The Sound Catalog" is a list of
sounds and the memories they invoke of Cuba and her ex-lovers. In "The Maldives," a Cuban woman gets
an American visa from her estranged father only to find out she has a brain tumor. She plans, very matterof-factly,
a final solo trip to the Maldives. "Cola of Oblivion" also shows off Obejas's wit and sense of
tragic irony, as a woman referred to as only "the visitor" eats dinner with her mother's cousin, who
simultaneously berates the mother for leaving Cuba without sending gifts back and pleads with the visitor to
help them get to America. "Waters" describes a trip home by an expat author, who is asked accusingly
whether she dreams in Spanish or English. VERDICT While not exactly pleasant to read, Obejas's stories
demonstrate an acute understanding of being caught between two places and cultures as different as
America and Cuba. A nice addition to libraries that serve immigrant communities.--Kate Gray, Boston P.L.,
MA
* Weil, Josh. The Age of Perpetual Light. Grove. Sept. 2017. 272p. ISBN 9780802127013. $25; ebk. ISBN
9780802188779. F
These stories approach light and its effect on people from many angles, both oblique and direct, with the
entire collection bookended by two stories that are part of the same narrative. The first, "No Flies, No
Folly," set in late 19th-century Pennsylvania, concerns itinerant tinker Yankel and his illicit relationship
with Amish farm wife Esther, to whom he brings the forbidden technology of electricity. The final story,
"Hello from Here," portrays a younger Yankel, a deserter from the tsar's army, living in a Baltic
photography studio writing his farewells to his family before escaping to America. "Essential Constituent of
Modern Living Standards" explores the violent history of rural electrification, while "Angle of Reflection"
takes on the emergence of space mirrors to counter the brutal effects of the Bosnian war. Penultimately,
"The First Bad Thing" transports the reader into a stark American future of perpetual light, where the
pervasive use of space mirrors to boost production has killed true night. This collection blends the evolving
technology of light with its multifaceted impact on people's lives. The characters and settings are crafted
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with an ethereal skill that sets the mind spinning into new orbits. VERDICT Highly recommended for the
discerning reader.--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Fiction." Library Journal, 1 July 2017, p. 66+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497612709/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=257d36e2.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497612709

QUOTED: "Norton's work is appealing precisely because the story has a layer of gravity, and it is ultimately an enjoyable character study rather than a murder mystery shrouded in darkness."

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Norton, Graham: HOLDING
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Norton, Graham HOLDING Atria (Adult Fiction) $25.00 8, 1 ISBN: 978-1-5011-7326-4
A quiet Irish town is rocked by the discovery of a body.Human remains are found buried at a construction
site in Duneen, Ireland, propelling the bored Sgt. PJ Collins into bumbling, earnest action. Questions
immediately arise as to whether the body might belong to Tommy Burke, who was thought to have run off
to England two decades ago. PJ doesn't have much experience with women--"he had managed to get
through decades of adulthood without emotional attachment"--and somehow his work on the case leads him
to quickly develop inappropriate relationships with Evelyn Ross and Brid Riordan, two women who had
once fought over Tommy. As the investigation continues, these women and their families are forced to
confront long-buried secrets and betrayals. Evelyn realizes her life has slipped away, as she has lived with
her two sisters for the past 20 years waiting for Tommy to return, whereas Brid begins to reconsider her
loveless marriage after recalling her less-than-thrilling engagement to Tommy. PJ is infused with a new
sense of professional energy by the case, but he's wary of becoming romantically involved with either of his
suspects even as he's drawn further into a potential love triangle. U.K. talk show host Norton's debut novel
is a mystery laced with a sense of humor, from the pointed observations Duneen's residents make about
each other to PJ's relationship with his housekeeper, Mrs Meany, who keeps him amply supplied with food.
The novel opens with a funny riff on Jane Austen: "It was widely accepted by the residents of Duneen that,
should a crime be committed and Sergeant Collins managed to apprehend the culprit, it would be very
unlikely that the arrest had involved a pursuit on foot." Yet the narrative also deepens into moments of
unexpected sadness and insight, as PJ begins to understand the losses women in the village have kept quiet
about for years. Norton's work is appealing precisely because the story has a layer of gravity, and it is
ultimately an enjoyable character study rather than a murder mystery shrouded in darkness. A bright, quickpaced
novel, especially inviting because of its tongue-in-cheek wit.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Norton, Graham: HOLDING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495428013/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7e675d0f.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495428013
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Well, no, yes, ah
Roger Lewis
Spectator.
296.9197 (Nov. 13, 2004): p64+.
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
Full Text:
FRANKIE HOWERD: STAND-UP COMIC by Graham McCann Fourth Estate, 18.99 [pounds sterling],
pp. 369, ISBN 1841153109 * 16.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848
SO ME by Graham Norton Hodder, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 342, ISBN 0340833483 * 16.99 [pounds
sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848
Frankie Howerd's career was a series of comebacks. In the early Fifties he was a radio star with listening
figures of 16 million; he topped the bill at the Palladium and appeared in a Royal Variety Performance eight
times. He flopped on live television, however, and between 1957 and 1962, when he was rescued from
oblivion and put on at the Establishment Club by Peter Cook, he'd so lost his confidence he thought of
leaving show business to run a country pub.
Edgy and depressed, and feeling like 'a disintegrating jigsaw', he could scrounge work only at the pier-end
in Scarborough and Yarmouth and in 'poorly paid pantomimes' in Streatham and Southsea. Additionally, the
Revenue was after him for thousands in back taxes and his crooked manager had secretly siphoned off the
comic's earnings, depositing the funds in a separate account used to pay for a wrestling venture. There was a
'spectacularly messy and uncomfortably public court case,' the judge agreeing that Howerd had been
swindled out of 5,216 [pounds sterling], the equivalent in today's money of 86,600 [pounds sterling].
His cabaret act, which impressed the 'slippery-souled' David Frost, who instantly hired him for That Was
The Week That Was, and which had saved him from his Basil Fawltyish fate as a hotelier (actually any pub
run by Frankie Howerd would have been worth visiting), was like being back on Workers' Playtime after the
war. 'Instead of making jokes about the foreman we make jokes about Harold Macmillan--it's the same
thing.'
In 1936, his career picking up, Howerd joined the team for the British transfer of A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum, 'the best musical to be seen in London for years', according to the critics. Howerd
took the Zero Mostel part of Pseudolus, the duplicitous slave. Where Mostel had been bug-eyed and
perspiring with hysteria (like his Max Bialystock in the film of The Producers), Howerd was all cool
primness and sauce--'no, oh no, don't, please, don't laugh ...'. He stayed with the show for 21 months,
perfecting the 'outraged pout' and high-pitched indignation that characterise Mr Bigger in Carry on Doctor,
Professor Inigo Tinkle in Carry on Up the Jungle, and of course Lurcio in Up Pompeii! Lurcio, sighing and
shrugging his shoulders, the servant with all the smarts, clearly derived from the Sondheim production.
With a corny script by Talbot Rothwell, and a cast with names such as Stovus Primus and Pussus Galoria,
Howerd's series, in 1970, co-starring Max Adrian as Ludicrus Sextus, was the first programme I ever
begged to be able to stay up past my bedtime to watch. For my tenth birthday I was given the LP, Frankie
Howerd Tells the Story of Peter and the Wolf. It was brilliant--I still have it. How about that for an
introduction to classical music?
The film spin-offs (Up the Chastity Belt and Up the Front, the latter with Peter Bull as a German general
called Kobler) were flops, and Howerd went out of fashion again. His camp mannerisms were appropriated
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by Larry Grayson ('That man stole my bread and butter'), who emphasised the homosexuality which
Howerd had kept at a distance. Indeed, the fun with Howerd was the way he ogled the birds and the
nymphs, and even as a child I knew he was bluffing. His cawing and cackling, surprise and mock-horror,
were beautifully choreographed nonsense: 'Now, er, ladies and gentle-men. Harken. Now, ah, no. Harken.
Listen, now. Harr-ken. Harr-ever-so-ken.' Simultaneously cross and beseeching, his swooping voice and
lugubrious face, mugging and miming, created the illusion that he was stumbling and about to slip up. He
was mesmerising. His act wasn't about anything much except his own extraordinary talking--'No. Liss-en!
Um. Ah!' Larry Grayson (and John Inman), by contrast, came out with pure sodomitical innuendo. 'The
things I've had through my letter-box over Easter,' Grayson once lamented, referring to his postman, Pop-itin-Pete.
While Grayson went on about his colourful chums, Everard and Slack Alice, Howerd was in the doldrums
as Ali Oopla in Whoops Bagdhad! and Private Potts in Then Churchill Said to Me, which was cancelled and
not broadcast because so poor. Howerd's knees went, he gained weight, suffered from attacks of stage fright,
and bought a house near Weston-super-Mare. He turned up on 100 trifling chat shows, quizzes and panel
games, and was rediscovered in the Eighties by a new generation of university students, who wore tee-shirts
emblazoned with the words 'Get Your Titters Out!' and 'Nay, Nay and Thrice Nay'. He appeared in Roland
Rat's Yuletide Binge and was declared a national hero by Jonathan Ross. He died in 1992. Cilia Black sang
at his funeral.
There have been several other books on Howerd, and up to half a dozen (dreary) documentaries on the box.
Graham McCann's biography, nevertheless, seems neither repetitive nor derivative. As with his masterly
account of Dad's Army, this is an objective and scrupulously researched study, unlikely to be superseded. In
an appendix, each and every one of Howerd's perfomances is logged, from engagements on the BBC Light
Programme in 1946 to an appearance on Des O'Connor Tonight with Kiri Te Kanawa in October 1991. I
salute this mad scholarly detail. My only carp is with the assertion that Howerd 'did not seem like the other
stand-up comedians', for surely he had much in common, stylistically and temperamentally, with Kenneth
Williams and Charles Hawtrey? And when McCann concludes that 'he seemed like one of us', surely the
very opposite is the case?
The point of Howerd is that he was so alien. He was a donkey-faced maniac in an improbable chestnutbrown
hairpiece. As Barry Cryer used to say, 'When Frankie scratched the back of his head, the hairpiece
would go up and down like a pedal bin.' He was five years older than he pretended to be (b. 1917 not 1922)
and was raised, like Bob Hope, in Eltham, in the municipal borough of Woolwich, where his father (who he
claimed abused him and locked him in a cupboard) was a clerk at the Royal Arsenal munitions factory. As a
child he was very devout, belonging to the Band of Hope, the Cubs and the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel. 'I joined everything religious in sight,' he said. This led to the Church Dramatic Society,
pantomimes and concerts, and his act--the 'high-decibel shrieks and yelps'--was born fully formed.
Howerd enjoyed his experience in the war--all those manly soldiers, perhaps, with whom he'd hold hands in
the barracks. He was sent on a Commando course in Devon and on D-Day drove a lorry through a hedge
and into a tree. He was promoted to sergeant and organised the concert parties--'Oh, no, don't, n-n-no,
please don't', he'd hoot--and the armed forces loved him. He frequently went back to entertain the troops,
travelling to Malaya, Korea, Ulster; he also went aboard the Ark Royal. It was an act, really, rambling
around the possibility of inadequacy and failure and deflation; but as with Tommy Cooper's magic tricks,
you knew it would come right. Every mumble and stutter had to be scripted and polished, usually by Eric
Sykes or Galton and Simpson.
Sadly, during his various periods of decline and humiliation, the 'nervous exhaustion" was all too real.
Owing to large brandies and vodkas and a reliance on LSD, Howerd didn't have to pretend to forget his
lines. A Funny Thing Happened ..., when revived for him at Chichester in 1986, was a disaster. He had to sit
down for the musical numbers and tended also to wander off the stage, believing he'd not be missed. He
went on a recuperative holiday to the Canary Islands and, taking in the view, toppled off his hotel balcony.
A similar thing once occurred in Wales. He went pony-trekking and fell off a mountain.
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He owned a large house in Edwardes Square, Kensington, but preferred to eat with Barry Took and June
Whitfield and their families, turning up unannounced with tins of pea soup, corned beef and sultana
pudding. His long-term partner was Dennis Heymer who, as with Dirk Bogarde's Forwood, was assigned
the role of personal manager, 'a super-Jeeves who can drive a car, deal with hotel bookings, supervises
lighting and stage props' etc. They were together until the end, though this didn't stop Howerd from
attempting--doggedly and pathetically and fruitlessly--to pick up other lovers. 'You don't know what you're
missing!' he'd wail, as another young man fled the room.
Grayson and Inman may have acquired Howerd's more blatant eccentricities (though they quite lacked his
command, his air of being a crumpled cousin of Henry Irving coming before the velvet curtains at the
Lyceum to make orotund apologies); but the damp upper lip, the seduction of the audience, the way people
were taken into his confidence, and then rejected ('I'm appealing tonight, ladies and gentle-men, for succour.
Succ-our!'): all this has been inherited, and perverted, by Graham Norton, whom I can't abide. He has all the
appeal of an over-familiar waiter in Dean Street. Subtract the vocal tricks and affectations of Frankie
Howerd, and what are you left with? A tiresome and shrill leprechaun who has received Bafta awards for a
television show where women are invited to fire ping-pong balls out of their private parts. Courtesy of the
World Wide Web, Norton has also shown viewers 'God Save the Queen' being played in an unconventional
way on a penny whistle.
So Me is so him, i.e. vain, superficial and sordid. The worst tragedy to have befallen Norton is reaching the
age of 40. He goes on and on about this ('I had to admit that I was tired'.) There is also a chapter given over
to finding a mouse in the kitchen of one of his many tastefully designed homes. The trouble with today's
celebrity gays is that nothing is at stake for them. With Howerd, Kenneth Williams and Hawtrey, the
concealments and tensions necessary in their private lives produced the creative energy. Norton, Julian
Clary and the rest of them, despite the endless erection and dildo gags, are flaccid.
Lewis, Roger
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Lewis, Roger. "Well, no, yes, ah." Spectator, 13 Nov. 2004, p. 64+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A125338162/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cf70aa61.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A125338162

QUOTED: "wistful, atmospheric mystery" "winning tale."

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Holding
Publishers Weekly.
264.22 (May 29, 2017): p46.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Holding
Graham Norton. Atria, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-15011-7326-4
British TV personality Norton (So Me, a memoir) makes his fiction debut with a wistful, atmospheric
mystery starring Sgt. Patrick James "PJ" Collins, the solitary, overweight keeper of the peace in the
backwater town of Duneen, Ireland. Nothing exciting ever happens in Duneen--until the day the crew at a
housing development under construction unearths human bones. The forensic team from Cork confirms the
remains are of a young adult male who died of a blow to the head. Could the bones belong to Tommy
Burke, who disappeared from Duneen 20 years earlier, after his romantic triangle with two local girls came
to a bad end? The story around town is that someone saw Tommy board a bus to head for London, but no
one has seen or heard from him since. As the investigation unfolds, nothing is as it first appears. For some,
hearts broken long ago have not healed, while other lonely, forgotten people have carried on as best they
can. PJ doesn't believe in happy endings, but, as this winning tale shows, sometimes things work themselves
out in ways no one could have imagined. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Holding." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 46. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500705/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=66ed18c2.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A494500705

"Fiction." Library Journal, 1 July 2017, p. 66+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497612709/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018. "Norton, Graham: HOLDING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495428013/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018. Lewis, Roger. "Well, no, yes, ah." Spectator, 13 Nov. 2004, p. 64+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A125338162/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018. "Holding." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 46. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500705/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

• Irish Times
  https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/graham-norton-wasted-on-tv-john-boyne-reviews-his-new-novel-1.2794026
  Word count: 1166

  QUOTED: "Those who don’t care for his BBC television chat show will likely avoid it and those who do might be surprised, even disappointed, by the restraint and delicacy on display throughout. Either way, readers would be advised to put all pre-conceptions aside, for this is a fine novel and it would be a cold-hearted reader who failed to feel a lump in the throat at the hope and optimism displayed in the final two pages."

  Graham Norton ‘wasted on TV’: John Boyne reviews his new novel
  Put all preconceptions aside: this is a fine novel - the TV star may just have discovered his true vocation

  Graham Norton. Photograph: Darragh Kane.
  Graham Norton. Photograph: Darragh Kane.

  John Boyne

  Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 16:00

  First published:
  Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 12:00

  Book Title:
  Holding

  ISBN-13:
  978-1444792003

  Author:
  Graham Norton

  Publisher:
  Hodder & Stoughton

  Guideline Price:
  £20.00

  It’s very easy to be cynical. There are a limited number of publishing deals available to debut novelists so when one is taken by a celebrity, some might wonder whether it has been awarded on merit or because the name alone might help recoup the investment. Comedians from Eric Morecambe to Ardal O’Hanlon have tried their hand at fiction with varying degrees of success, generally returning to their day jobs after a book or two, although some continue to take up valuable bookshop space with prolific but unimpressive work. (Naming no names, but Ben Elton.)

  I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I came to Holding by Graham Norton with certain expectations, all of which were confounded early on. I assumed it would be funny and it’s not, for although there are occasional moments of dry wit, this is not a comic novel. I imagined it would be a quick, easy read but in fact it’s skilfully paced. I thought it would be all plot – but while the story is certainly engaging, it’s the delicate characterisation that stands out.

  Look, I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t think it was going to be very good. I was completely and utterly wrong.

  John Connell: I feel lucky I can do both these jobs, the physical and the mental and see how they feed into each other. A calf grows like a book, day by day, line by line. Some thrive and others fade. Photograph: Eamonn DoyleI was born a farmer’s son, but left years ago. Now I’m back
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  Catherine Ryan Howard, LJ Ross and Rick O’SheaSecrets threatened with exposure and a carnival of dark delights
  Set in a small west Cork town, Holding is a novel with no central character but rather a cast of about half a dozen, each of whom finds their lives changed by the discovery of human remains in a plot of land earmarked for a new housing development. There’s Sgt Collins, a corpulent but kindly man, inexperienced in romance, who’s suffered bouts of public humiliation since his teenage years. There’s Evelyn Ross and Brid Riordan, two middle-aged women whose lives have been diminished by the disappearance of the man they both loved many years earlier. Surprisingly, there are no significant young characters in the book, a brave choice on the part of an author who prefers to focus on the sense of despair that comes from finding oneself halfway through life only to realise that one has achieved nothing of value and probably never will.

  Although the mystery of the discovered body lies at the centre of the story, Norton is less interested in the identity of the murderer than the effect of loss on those the victim left behind. There are powerful moments of pathos throughout, particularly towards female characters condemned to loveless marriages or unwelcome spinsterhood, and Norton writes of their isolation with considerable empathy. Most successful in this regard is his depiction of Brid Riordan, who turns to alcohol when the memories of her lost love engulf her fragile spirit. Given the repeated references to Sgt Collins’ obesity, an unexpected sexual encounter between the pair could have been played for laughs but instead is both unfussy and gentle and it’s to Norton’s credit that he writes of two lonely people uncertain how to cope with awakened feelings of romance with sensitivity and understanding.

  Common themes of Irish fiction – the importance of land in rural communities, unpunished assaults by men towards women, the horrors of teenage pregnancy – all find a place in Holding but nowhere does the author resort to cliché. In fact, he writes of each with real originality which is no mean feat considering how well trod these paths have been over the years. Interestingly, the only priest in the novel is a minor character who appears in just one significant scene and he is no demon but a considerate man doing his misguided best to help a young girl who has got “into trouble”.

  Holding is a considerable achievement and if it was a debut novel by an unknown Irish writer it would likely garner significant praise. For me, it’s one of the more authentic debuts I’ve read in recent years simply because it’s written in such an understated manner, eschewing linguistic eccentricity and absurd storylines in favour of genuine characters and tender feeling. Even the title of the novel is a nod towards simplicity over idiosyncrasy.

  However, as we don’t live in a meritocracy and literary snobbery can often prevail over considered judgment, there’s a chance that Norton may struggle to attract readers even though the novel is guaranteed to draw significant media attention. Those who don’t care for his BBC television chat show will likely avoid it and those who do might be surprised, even disappointed, by the restraint and delicacy on display throughout. Either way, readers would be advised to put all pre-conceptions aside, for this is a fine novel and it would be a cold-hearted reader who failed to feel a lump in the throat at the hope and optimism displayed in the final two pages.

  It’s possible that Norton has been wasted on TV all these years.

  John Boyne’s 10th novel, The Heart’s Invisible Furies, will be published in February (Doubleday)

  Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 16:00

  First published:
  Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 12:00

• The Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/02/holding-graham-norton-review-debut-novel
  Word count: 1055

  QUOTED: "Norton is good with character but, aside from the odd description of a grey Georgian house or a semi-deserted pub, doesn’t do much to evoke the textures and minutiae of everyday life."
  "Nonetheless, Holding is a solidly written piece of popular fiction that isn’t quite as sparkly as it should be but has enough in the way of action and charm to keep the reader interested."

  Holding by Graham Norton review – a solid debut
  The chatshow host keeps his TV persona out of this amiable debut novel about murder in a rural Irish community
  Alex Clark

  Sun 2 Oct 2016 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 19.58 EDT
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  Graham Norton
  No knowing nods to camera needed: Graham Norton. Photograph: Christopher Baines
  Hell is other people, as is daily confirmed to us, but it’s also the title of the episode of Father Ted in which Graham Norton makes his first appearance as Father Noel Furlong. Here, Ted and Dougal’s doomed holiday is made infinitely worse by the appearance of Norton as a garrulous priest leading a youth club outing and determined to make the best of a cramped caravan in poor weather with a rousing sing-song. Furlong popped up twice more, in an episode in which a plane-load of priests face oblivion, and in another that sees him trapped – once again with his youth group – in a maze of caves.

  There is an interesting tension sometimes found in Norton's TV work – a sense of melancholy beneath the bravura display
  If many comedies home in on a character’s idiosyncrasies, magnify them to the point of absurdity and then repeat the trick over and over again, Father Ted was primus inter pares; if not, why do we all still roar “drink, feck, arse” to indicate over-excitement? With Father Furlong, the trait was obvious – impossibly bouncy talkativeness, a Tigger in holy orders – but the setting was also key; always claustrophobic, always teetering on the verge of disaster, always asking the question, what else would you do but sing?

  It’s a dilemma that the inhabitants of Duneen, a small town in County Cork that plays host to Norton’s first novel, have largely been unable to answer; instead, most of them seem to have found other ways to sublimate their desperation. For PJ Collins, the local policeman, it’s in mountains of rashers and pork chops and scones; for unhappily married Brid Riordan, it’s white wine, furtively swigged from the family fridge or from those miniature bottles customarily served in Irish pubs; for beautiful Evelyn Ross, thrice marked by her mother’s death, father’s suicide and love object’s desertion, it’s keeping a perfect house for her two elder sisters.

  The name's Norton. Graham Norton.
  Read more
  Naturally, this stasis cannot hold in fiction as it might in life, and the discovery of human bones during redevelopment works heralds seismic repercussions for the local population. It’s only marginal figures – the town busybody, the “skinny Polish girl” who works in the local shop – whose lives proceed in a relatively unruffled fashion. PJ, whose beat requires little in the way of crack policing, is suddenly thrust into the middle of a thrilling cold case and – it stretches the imagination a bit, but is sweetly done – also finds his determination never to risk romantic failure challenged, albeit by the two chief murder suspects. Elsewhere, the staples of rural intrigue and police procedural abound: the infuriating know-it-all copper from the big city, the slowly unravelled mysteries of previous decades, the adjunct storylines that prove to be red herrings.

  It would be unfair to try to draw parallels between Norton’s television persona as a chatshow and Eurovision host and his writerly characteristics; even celebrities whose fame appears to rest on a distilled essence of self, or at least the illusion of it, are allowed to diversify. And a search for surface similarity wouldn’t get you very far, either, for there is little here that is caustic, or humorously prurient, or designed to mimic outraged propriety with a knowing nod to camera. Indeed, I’m not sure anyone reading this book under plain covers would be likely to guess its author.

  And yet there is an interesting tension in the book that can sometimes be found in Norton’s performance work – a sense of the melancholy underlying the bravura display, the gestures towards concealed isolation. Familiar conceits – the handsome local last seen boarding a bus out of the countryside, the faithless husband who can’t bear to yield his claim on his wife’s farm – are neatly deployed. This is hardly to claim that his amiable suspense novel-cum-romance shares much ground with William Trevor or Edna O’Brien in its exposition of the contours of Irish life; Norton is good with character but, aside from the odd description of a grey Georgian house or a semi-deserted pub, doesn’t do much to evoke the textures and minutiae of everyday life. (Tellingly, he is somewhat better at this in the novel’s occasional flashback scenes, and particularly in a well-drawn evocation of teenagers attending a disastrous local concert.) Contemporary Ireland makes an appearance via the property boom, but you won’t learn much about, for example, the Repeal the 8th campaign or Ireland’s continuing membership of EU and consequent rush on passports. More surprisingly – and perhaps in an attempt to avoid Oirishry – he steers clear of rendering Irish speech beyond a few “sures” and “lads”.

  Nonetheless, Holding is a solidly written piece of popular fiction that isn’t quite as sparkly as it should be but has enough in the way of action and charm to keep the reader interested. At its close, Norton appears to leave the door open for further dispatches, although not necessarily from exactly the same location; perhaps, like Father Furlong, he is simply too restless to sit still for long.

  Holding is published by Hodder & Stoughton (£20). Click here to buy it for £16.40

  Topics
  Fiction

  The Observer
  Graham Norton

  Crime fiction

  reviews

• The Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/30/graham-norton-holding-review-surprisingly-sweet
  Word count: 710

  QUOTED: "a ghost writer might have suggested occasionally stepping up the pace a bit.

  But it remains a highly enjoyable, very readable book. There isn’t a breath of whimsy, and Norton doesn’t have the usual comedian-novelist’s urge to pepper every page with gags ."

  Holding by Graham Norton review – surprisingly sweet
  It rains and everyone is lonely, but the chatshow host’s debut is an enjoyably unblarneyfied vision of rural Ireland

  Jenny Colgan

  Fri 30 Sep 2016 02.30 EDT Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 07.53 EST
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  Graham Norton
  He doesn’t have the usual comedian-novelist’s urge to pepper every page with gags … Graham Norton. Photograph: Sophia Spring
  What an odd, charming little book this is. Written by a famous comedian, but not particularly funny, nor meant to be; set in a kind of frozen-in-aspic 1970s, with the odd non-working mobile phone; Graham Norton’s first novel presents an utterly unblarneyfied vision of rural Ireland which makes it seem dreary, sad and miserable, yet still draws you in. I have absolutely no idea who or what it’s for, apart from people who couldn’t bear rural Ireland in the 70s and are glad they don’t live there any more, which may or may not include Norton himself.

  The novel is set in Duneen, an unpretty corner of Ireland where “time didn’t pass … it seeped”. The hero is Sergeant PJ Collins, an underworked local garda. He is a man whose entire life has been blighted by his own fatness – until a long-buried skeleton is dug up on a construction site and he stumbles upon a Midsomer Murders-style mystery. There are several other profoundly damaged central characters: downtrodden Mrs Meany, three mysterious spinster sisters and Brid, an alchoholic. But you warm to them all. The book is thoughtfully done, by a writer who really cares about them.

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  It rains, it seems, constantly in Duneen, and every single person there is unutterably lonely and melancholy and filled with bitterness and regret. It’s a bit like reading a novel-length version of “Eleanor Rigby”. For an Irish novel partly set in the past, though, it is blessedly free of priests, nuns and lower-deck-of-the Titanic-style hijinks. There’s also no evidence of a ghost writer, a fact one gathers partly from endearingly effortful phrases such as “the streetlights bled the shadow of [the fox’s] tail along the pavement behind him like a dark cloak”, and partly because a ghost writer might have suggested occasionally stepping up the pace a bit.

  But it remains a highly enjoyable, very readable book. There isn’t a breath of whimsy, and Norton doesn’t have the usual comedian-novelist’s urge to pepper every page with gags (or the opposing tendency of standups such as Ben Elton and Rob Newman, who in their novels feel the need to display their issue-led Serious Learning at every turn).

  There are of course occasional sparks of Nortonesque wit – I liked the flashily dressed detective from Cork, who everyone secretly thinks is a total prick – but on the whole it is a gentle read. Norton has a trait which is unusual (and possibly undesirable) in a novelist: he treats all his characters with kindness, even the baddies.

  I have unusually bad form when it comes to predicting which books will be giant successes (Harry Potter seemed a bit too middle-class to me in 1997; Fifty Shades of Grey not hot at all in 2012), but I probably wouldn’t bet the house on this one. On the other hand, if it comes your way, you might be surprised by its sweetness; this is Graham Norton as Thoughtful Agony Uncle and Empathetic Radio 2 host rather than acerbic Sparkly Friday Night Frontsman, and absolutely none the worse for that.

  • Holding is published by Hodder & Stoughton. To order a copy for £16.40 (RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

  Topics

• The Bookbag
  http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=Holding_by_Graham_Norton
  Word count: 657

  QUOTED: "A clever and carefully crafted debut, Norton explores the life of an Irish village in brilliant detail, with an emotional and thrilling story that keeps the reader gripped. It's well worth a read. ... The quiet, personal drama that he's chosen to focus on is very well written and drawn."

  Holding by Graham Norton

  Holding by Graham Norton
  Norton Holding.jpg
  Buy Holding by Graham Norton at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

  Category: General Fiction
  Rating: 5/5
  Reviewer: Luke Marlowe
  Reviewed by Luke Marlowe
  Summary: A warm, funny and quietly moving debut from presenter Graham Norton, Holding is packed full of Norton's trademark wit, and the years of chatting to people as a talk show host and agony aunt are put to good use in embuing the citizens of Duneen with a huge amount of humanity.
  Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
  Pages: 320 Date: October 2016
  Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
  External links: Author's website
  ISBN: 978-1444792003
  Share on: Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit Stumbleupon Follow us on Twitter

  The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama, and yet the inhabitants are troubled. Sergeant PJ Collins hasn't always been this overweight, mother-of-two Brid Riordan hasn't always been an alcoholic, and elegant Evelyn Ross hasn't always felt her life a total waste. When human remains are discovered on a farm, thought to be those of Tommy Burke, an ex lover of both Brid and Evelyn, the village's dark past begins to unravel. As the frustrated PJ struggles to solve a case for the first time in his life, he unearths a community's worth of anger, resentment, secrets, and regret.

  Comedian, presenter, DJ, agony aunt, writer and occasional actor, Norton is clearly a man of many talents, but the first foray into fiction is always a tricky one. Where a few, like Dawn French and Stephen Fry have soared, many celebrities have written frankly dreadful debuts - just look at Morrisey's bizarre debut, or even Sylvester Stallone's very odd first novel. Thankfully, no such worries for Graham Norton - he's a skilled writer who clearly possess a huge amount of emotional intelligence, and puts it to good use here.

  Norton's main strengths as a presenter have always been his wit, his warmth, and his ability to put guests at ease - his show is the only one where celebrities look vaguely comfortable to be there, even enjoying themselves. It's no surprise then, that he's a hugely empathic writer, creating characters who are layered and emotionally real, not just the caricatures of village figures that they could so easily have been. The plot too is a thoughtful thriller - it's a slow burner, but one that nevertheless had me racing through the pages towards the end of the book. The twists are clever, surprising, and always dealt with in a way that shows utmost respect to the circumstances of the characters.

  A clever and carefully crafted debut, Norton explores the life of an Irish village in brilliant detail, with an emotional and thrilling story that keeps the reader gripped. It's well worth a read, and I have no doubt that it'll do very well - it's perhaps a debut that feels rather muted from a comedian known for his loud wit and shows with moments of campness, but the quiet, personal drama that he's chosen to focus on is very well written and drawn, and may well set Norton out for a new side career as a novelist. Many thanks to the publishers for the copy.

  For further reading I'll recommend Notes From An Exhibition by Patrick Gale. Much like Holding, it's a quietly moving character study, but one with real fire and passion at its heart.

  Booklists.jpg Holding by Graham Norton is in the Top Ten General Fiction Books of 2016.

• BookPage
  https://bookpage.com/reviews/21674-graham-norton-holding#.WravsajwYdU
  Word count: 361

  QUOTED: "a ... subtle and touching narrative of secrets long buried, lost love and self-discovery that will stay with readers well after reaching the end of this story."

  Web Exclusive – August 02, 2017

  HOLDING
  Murder most charming
  BookPage review by G. Robert Frazier

  At first blush, a debut novel by comedian and BBC late-night host Graham Norton sounds like it would be rife with wry humor and witty antics in the vein of his TV show. But aside from a somewhat quirky lead character, this novel is surprisingly down to earth. You could say it’s downright cozy, because, essentially, that’s what it is: a modern-day cozy mystery in the tradition of one of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple adventures.

  Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, Holding is a refreshing, albeit nostalgic, change of pace from the grittier, fast-paced domestic thrillers crowding for space on bookshelves this summer.

  At its heart is Sergeant P. J. Collins, a somewhat overweight, middle-aged cop who's content to patrol the remote Irish village of Duneen where nothing exciting really happens. Even after human remains are discovered on the site of a new housing development, Collins is quick to let the more experienced Detective Superintendent Linus Dunne from neighboring Cork lead the investigation.

  He’s surprised and flattered when Dunne encourages him to conduct his own line of inquiry of residents—particularly Brid Riordan and Evelyn Ross, who both had affairs with the deceased, Tommy Burke. A new set of bones, those belonging to an infant, are soon found near the first set and propel the investigation toward even darker secrets.

  As Collins delves into the trio’s background and learns about their sordid past, his own sense of self-worth and confidence slowly awaken—as do his own affections for Brid.

  Norton weaves in occasional humor, mostly at Collins’ expense, but overall opts for a more subtle and touching narrative of secrets long buried, lost love and self-discovery that will stay with readers well after reaching the end of this story.

• Sydney Morning Herald
  https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/holding-review-graham-nortons-first-novel-is-a-smalltown-murder-mystery-20161121-gstqev.html
  Word count: 205

  QUOTED: "It's measured, readable and blarney-free small-town crime."

  Holding review: Graham Norton's first novel is a small-town murder mystery
  By Cameron Woodhead22 November 2016 — 9:26am
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  Holding
  Graham Norton
  Holding. By Graham Norton.
  Holding. By Graham Norton.

  Photo: Supplied
  Hodder & Stoughton, $32.99
  Popular British comedian and chat show host Graham Norton adds another string to his bow with this debut detective novel. If you were expecting the flamboyant persona and outbursts of wit he brings to the small screen, you're in for a surprise. Holding has a more recessed, relaxed appeal. Set in a rural Irish town where everyone seems a bit lost and melancholy, the book focuses on PJ, a policeman who keeps boredom and insecurity at bay by comfort eating. His job becomes suddenly less dull when a body is discovered near the local school, and a disturbing cold case is reopened. Suspects, including a house full of spinster sisters, are everywhere, and PJ must work around a patronising city cop to solve the mystery. It's measured, readable and blarney-free small-town crime.

• Evening Standard
  https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/holding-by-graham-norton-review-a3362831.html
  Word count: 769

  QUOTED: "As a novel, it’s fine. There’s a nicely constructed plot and an element of sinister homicidal mania at the end, which is always good, and the redemptive suggestion that you can find love even if appearances are against you."

  Lifestyle › Books
  Holding by Graham Norton - review
  MELANIE MCDONAGH
  Thursday 6 October 2016 15:53
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  Graham Norton — what does he conjure up? The Eurovision Song Contest? A filthy mind and an extraordinary affinity with celebs? A rather good newspaper agony uncle?

  Holding has none of these elements. Zero celeb references, no filthy jokes — in fact, pretty well no jokes at all — and no gay characters. What you do get is the Irish element. Holding is that fictional staple: the Irish village with secrets to tell.

  When a skeleton is dug up in the little village of Duneen it conjures up all sorts of ghosts from the past and one in particular: a young man with ties to two women, who escaped from them by bus more than 20 years before — or did he? When, in due course, this is followed by the discovery of a second skeleton, of a baby, that brings to mind another scandal, even more deeply buried.

  To say this is a bit of a trope isn’t of course to say that villages don’t have their secrets — my own family produced a couple of rather good ones in a small provincial town. It’s just that we’re on well trodden ground here — even when it’s being dug up.

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  Norton is an Irish Protestant from near Dublin, which, along with his sexuality, has given him a certain distance from the Ireland in which he grew up — when it was still a socially conservative, largely Catholic country. And he does have that aura of the clown whose smile hides a certain melancholy, which is probably why his central character, Sergeant Collins, is himself a bit put upon. He’s enormously fat, which has been a handicap in finding love, a condition aggravated by the plates of steaming pork chops his housekeeper, the unfortunately named Mrs Meany, keeps putting his way — and if you’re thinking Father Ted here, well, you won’t be alone.

  Yet even the most unpropitious externals need be no impediment to romantic success — Collins is practically fighting off the girls by the close. He’s not the only one with frustrated passions: there are the three spinster sisters up at the big but decaying house, not to mention an unfortunate woman whose husband married her for the farm and is snogging an attractive nurse every day, oddly, for all to see, in the hospital car park.

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  18
  show all
  The provincial Ireland here is curiously atemporal. It’s post-boom, so after 2008, but there’s much about the atmosphere which could be any period from 1972 to whenever it was that Norton left home.

  As a novel, it’s fine. There’s a nicely constructed plot and an element of sinister homicidal mania at the end, which is always good, and the redemptive suggestion that you can find love even if appearances are against you. There’s a bit of Maeve Binchy about it, for those who like that kind of thing. You’ll get through it nice and easy in no time at all.

  Perhaps the one bit of social realism is that Duneen Police Station gets closed down at the end, with the operations transferred to a more distant town. Now that, at least, has the ring of truth.

  £7.99, Amazon, Buy it now

• RTE
  https://www.rte.ie/culture/2016/1020/825609-holding-graham-nortons-debut-novel-reviewed/
  Word count: 647

  QUOTED: "The novel isn't exactly a page turner ... but it was an easy and pleasant enough read."

  Reviewed: Graham Norton's debut novel Holding
  Updated / Thursday, 20 Oct 2016 17:01
  After publishing two volumes of memoirs, Graham Norton has written his first novel.
  After publishing two volumes of memoirs, Graham Norton has written his first novel.
  First-time novelist Graham Norton is best known as a successful TV and radio presenter. The Cork native's stratospheric career in media has led to him becoming a household name, which for many people will include remembering him as the over-excited Father Noel Furlong from Father Ted. On this occasion however, it is not Norton's acting skills or somewhat enigmatic persona that draws our attention, but rather his imagination and gift as a storyteller.

  Holding is Norton's debut novel, set in the rural town of Duneen, a remote part of County Cork. Duneen is a small and quiet town, where nothing out of the ordinary ever happens. The small village and local community has its routines; the farmers farm, the mothers bring their children to school, the church holds mass every Sunday and the local Sergeant mostly sits around drinking tea and overeating. Yes, life is pretty predictable and nondescript - that is until human remains are uncovered on an old farm during construction works.

  With the resurfacing of these bones, so do old passions, grudges and dark secrets long since buried. Rumours run rife throughout the once-quaint village as suspicion grows that the discovered bones belong to those of Tommy Burke. Nearly thirty years has passed since young Tommy skipped town without a trace, leaving two confused and heartbroken women in his wake: Evelyn Ross and Bríd Riordan.

  Despite his lack of confidence, it is up to local Sergeant PJ Collins to solve the shocking mystery and put the now-married Bríd and single Evelyn out of their misery. Thus, an overweight sergeant, alcoholic stay-at-home mother and a broken-hearted spinster are all entangled in a web of self discovery and reflection.

  The novel asks us to consider the ways in which we negotiate the past and the future. At what point should we let go of the past? You face challenges and learn lessons from it, but can holding onto something too much hold us back?

  Norton's characters recount tales of their youth which capture the difficult and contradictory world in which they lived. An oppressive Ireland ruled by the church is juxtaposed with the forward thinking of an expressive wider world: 'The sixties were an odd and unsettling time for teenage girls in Ballytorne: magazines showed them a world full of long-haired boys...rock and roll... yet there was no sign of either in the town.'

  Despite the heinous crime at its centre, the story is very sweet. Rather than it being the focal point of the novel, the uncovered bones act as the catalyst for the characters to reflect on their lives, to flick 'through the pages of a life yet lived'. Each person must decide whether or not they are brave enough to change and step into the future, whether this is 'beginning or end'.

  The novel isn't exactly a page turner, nor was I hanging on the edge of my seat desperate to find out what happened to the characters next, but it was an easy and pleasant enough read. Sweet and occasionally pedestrian in nature, its 312 pages (of rather spaced-out print) is the type of thing that could be sifted through on a Sunday afternoon with nice cup of tea and a few biscuits.

  Grace Keane

  Holding is published by Hodder & Stoughton, and is out now. Graham Norton will be discussing Holding on The Late Late Show tomorrow night (Friday, October 20th).

• Lambda Literary
  https://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/fiction/10/16/holding-by-graham-norton/
  Word count: 584

  ‘Holding’ by Graham Norton
  Review by Michael Graves
  October 16, 2017

  Enjoying success as a popular talk show host and memoirist in the UK, Grahan Norton has managed to penetrate the consciousness of American popular culture. He appeared, as himself, in the 2016 film adaptation of the beloved television show Absolutely Fabulous. He also took a seat as guest judge on RuPaul’s All Stars Drag Race. And now he has written a novel, Holding. Sure, countless celebrities dream about penning novels. The judgmental snob in us all may quickly dismiss this work. A comic showman writing literary fiction? What is most notable about Holding is, after only a few pages, readers forget that Graham Norton is, in fact, the author.

  Holding unfurls in the dinky Irish town of Duneen. Among a pack of locals, Sergeant PJ Collins is our unorthodox hero. Norton writes, “PJ just got bigger and bigger…he could see that he had hidden behind his size and used it as an excuse so he didn’t have to compete in all the trials of adolescence. Being overweight hadn’t made him happy necessarily, but it helped him avoid a great deal of heartache. It got him off the hook.” PJ’s career in law enforcement normally consists of speeding violations and herding drunks after last call. One crisp morning, however, he receives alert that human bones have been discovered at a nearby construction site. Duneen instantly whirls with gossip. Mothers trade theories at O’Driscolls market. Charity coffee hours brim with possible suspects and motives. Even sweet old Mrs. Meany is captivated. At the center of everything, PJ quickly becomes a celebrity himself. Even though he’s flooded with questions, PJ seems to be the fellow with the fewest answers. “There are no happy endings in life […]” PJ laments, “so why go bother looking for one?”

  Bodily remains can only mean one thing: murder. PJ and Detective Dunne (a real prick, according to PJ) deduce that the bones must belong to the once beloved town heartthrob, Tommy Burke. Tommy has been missing for nearly twenty-five years and has left behind quite a mess. Brid Riordan, the neighborhood drunk, was once engaged to Tommy. Was his marital pledge for Brid’s real estate or Brid’s love? Evelyn Ross, the orphaned town beauty, claims she and Tommy had a deep, fairytale-like love only few were privy to. Was Tommy planning to leave Brid or was this entire affair a result of Evelyn’s young imagination?

  The characters in Holding each clutch their own piece of a very large and very revered secret. As with any novel driven by mystery, the reader must complete the sleuthing on his or her own.

  Holding is a generous surprise. At the helm, Norton’s prose is crafty, inspired and sublimely comic. His characters, though, are his true victory. Our hero could easily be some sappy lug, but PJ is strong, warm and full of admirable shortcomings. The townspeople could simply be idle clichés, but truly, they are pumped with color, completely developed. Norton’s players are wardens of uneasy truths, but also, they hold some scrap of hope.

  With all judgments of the author’s multi-tiered biography aside, this book is a reminder that behind Graham Norton’s wit, there’s a whole lot of heart.

  Holding
  By Graham Norton
  Atria Books
  Hardcover, 9781501173264, 272 pp.
  August 2017

• The Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/19/biography.features2
  Word count: 731

  QUOTED: "with the exception of the mugging, the death of his father, and the celebrity friends, Norton seems almost entirely removed from his own reminiscences. Which is not to say that it isn't perfectly entertaining. ... So Me provides some laughs and some decent gossip. And while Norton is vain, superficial and pleased with himself, he's not stupid, or pretentious, or remotely earnest."

  Graham tells all? Actually, so not...
  Graham Norton's relentlessly cheerful tone makes light of the darker moments in his autobiography, So Me, says Polly Vernon
  Polly Vernon

  Sat 18 Sep 2004 20.10 EDT First published on Sat 18 Sep 2004 20.10 EDT
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  So Me by Graham Norton
  Buy So Me at the Guardian bookshop
  So Me
  by Graham Norton
  Hodder & Stoughton £18.99, pp320

  There are many reasons why the smart, scathing, and fashionable among us don't like Graham Norton. He's ubiquitous; he's gay in that grotesquely camp and oddly sexless fashion that is, apparently, the only gay variant mainstream Britain can truly embrace. He's puerile - see 'erotic' ping-pong ball performers ushering in the new millennium the only way they know how and penny whistles played in ways they weren't designed to be played. He's not a 'proper' interviewer, he talks over and/or humiliates his guests, who are little more than props in Norton's ongoing pursuit of rude - yet he's patently obsessed by celebrity: his own, and other people's. And worst of all, he's really popular and rich and has just defected to BBC 1 from Channel 4, lured by a squillion pounds. So, as I say, not liking Norton is the smart, scathing, fashionable thing to do.

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  It would be nice to report that his autobiography, So Me, reveals a humanity and a self-awareness that make the smart, scathing and fashionable among us reconsider our opinion (and ideally, by extension our world view in general, which is insufferably smug). Sadly, it doesn't.

  So Me can be divided roughly into three chunks: Norton's pre-London incarnation, in which he struggles with his sexual and intellectual identity; his pre-famous stage, in which he struggles with his professional identity (waiter or actor?); and his famous stage, in which he struggles with his property portfolio ('I seem to buy [houses] like people buy cans of tuna').

  Chunk one is an oddly detached account of Norton's childhood in west Cork, his progression on to a journalism course in Dublin, and a year-long stint in a commune in San Francisco. Experiences that must have been affecting - a breakdown at university, a bewildering early homosexual encounter with an exchange student on a campsite in France, an aborted audition for a job as a rent boy in San Francisco - are treated with relentlessly cheerful gloss. He opens the first chapter: 'Childhood: dull. Oh yes, there was the cross-dressing and the bed-wetting and the moving house 13 times...', and nothing really changes from then on in.

  Dark moments leak out through a gleeful and hard-bitten veneer. The most touching element of this first third comes from confessions extracted from diaries. 'Earlier, I made too light of that night in the tent...' 17-year-old Graham wrote of his first sexual interlude, on the French campsite. 'You see, I'm no honest writer, I make light so it reads jolly.' You don't say.

  Chunks two and three skip along: Norton gets to London, becomes a waiter, falls in love for the first time, gets mugged and nearly killed, and, aged thirtyish, launches himself on to the stand-up comedy circuit. He lands a part in Father Ted, and from then on, his ascent up the ranks of light entertainment is giddying.

  But with the exception of the mugging, the death of his father, and the celebrity friends, Norton seems almost entirely removed from his own reminiscences. Which is not to say that it isn't perfectly entertaining. Just as Norton is an entirely watchable telly proposition, So Me provides some laughs and some decent gossip. And while Norton is vain, superficial and pleased with himself, he's not stupid, or pretentious, or remotely earnest.

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• Coast
  http://www.thecoast.net.nz/life/book-reviews/stephanie-jones-book-review-the-life-and-loves-of-a-he-devil-by-graham-norton/
  Word count: 663

  QUOTED: "straddles the invisible line between too-much and not-enough. Tales of one-night-stands in unfamiliar environs and episodes of overindulgence are recounted with subtlety and a gauzy lens over the grittier bits."

  Stephanie Jones: Book Review - The Life and Loves of a He Devil by Graham Norton
  Author Stephanie Jones, SectionBook Reviews, Publish Date Friday, 14 November 2014, 12:00AM

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  Graham Norton’s effervescent blend of camp and cheek has earned him fans among all generations and three high-profile current roles, the most lucrative being a long-running Friday night talk-show gig that has made him one of the BBC’s most highly paid stars.

  The others, a fortnightly advice column in the Daily Telegraph and a Saturday morning show on BBC Radio 2, are covered in the ‘Work’ chapter of Norton’s frank and entertaining new memoir, The Life and Loves of a He Devil, which delivers what he promises at the outset - not a chronology of events since the publication of his autobiography proper, So Me, a decade ago, but a distillation of and hilarious rumination over his great passions, which along with his career include dogs, “booze”, men, divas, Ireland and New York.

  In an introductory anecdote that sets the mood for what follows – funny and revealing without being dirty, self-aware but not self-deprecating – Norton says the idea for a follow-up book about his life came to him as he surveyed the room at his 50th-birthday party (“itself an enormous gay wedding where I would declare my undying love for myself”) and saw himself reflected in the 300 attendees, who included k d lang, a “smattering” of guests from his talk show and a posse of friends, family and colleagues.

  Perhaps the most revealing portion of the book, the chapter on men, will also be the most familiar to those who have read So Me, as Norton unflinchingly recounts various carnal and romantic escapades and muses frankly on where he finds himself in his early 50s after a series of long-term and long-distance relationships. He admits that despite his fondness for an accent, the latter element isn’t accidental, for he is unwilling to share everything required to have the “happy ever after”. What is apparent, as the upfront placement of the chapter titled ‘Dogs’ suggests, is that the great loves of his life are a Labradoodle named Bailey and a terrier, Madge.

  Despite his lifelong obsession with dogs, he didn’t own one until adopting Bailey 10 years ago, and various humiliating experiences (Middle Eastern picnickers confronted with Bailey’s genetic brand of “hungry genius”; a hapless passerby who was left with the impression that Norton had imbued his pets with racist ideology) lead him to conclude, “If dignity is something that interests you, never get a dog.”

  Similar enthusiasm and candour infect the entire book, which, much as Norton does on television, straddles the invisible line between too-much and not-enough. Tales of one-night-stands in unfamiliar environs and episodes of overindulgence are recounted with subtlety and a gauzy lens over the grittier bits. As in So Me, Norton remembers a dear friend, Syd, who was beloved in their London community before his death from AIDS in the 1980s. It is a sobering reminder that in spite of the levity Norton applies to the experience of leaving “the shores of heterosexuality behind” after early affairs with women, many of his compatriots did not survive the era.

  Above all, the impression left by The Life and Loves of a He Devil is that of the author’s gratitude. Norton has innumerable loved ones, homes in London, Ireland and New York, a thriving career and, as a comprehensive physical at the half-century mark disclosed, robust health that has not been compromised by his close relationship with alcohol. Will we see another journey through the scintillating Norton psyche in 10 years’ time? I wouldn’t bet against it.

• The Northern Echo
  http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/culture/11592217.display/
  Word count: 266

  QUOTED: "Written firmly in the author's voice—which you'll either love or loathe—the more amusing moments will please fans."

  10th November 2014
  Book Review: The Life And Loves Of A He Devil - A Memoir by Graham Norton
  Book Review: The Life And Loves Of A He Devil - A Memoir by Graham Norton
  Book Review: The Life And Loves Of A He Devil - A Memoir by Graham Norton

  0 comments
  A DECADE after his revealing autobiography So Me, Norton's latest memoir provides an unconventional update from where he left off, taking his first baby steps with Auntie Beeb.

  With chapters split into themes, Norton muses on Men, New York and Ireland, recalling stories with a scatter-gun approach from childhood to the present following a vague chronological narrative.

  There's revelations and gossip if you look deep enough amidst the anecdotes, regrets as well as healthy doses of positivity, particularly on getting old disgracefully and reacquainting himself with home.

  Unfortunately - and Norton makes no apology for this - the first chapter is on the revelatory-free subject of Dogs - the pooches he has owned, and the more embarrassing moments caused by errant pets.

  Written firmly in the author's voice - which you'll either love or loathe - the more amusing moments will please fans (Liza Minnelli's wedding, for example), the tone giving the reader a cosy glimpse of the pomp and circumstance Norton sometimes finds himself in among the showbiz glitterati.

  6/10
  Review by James Cleary

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