Two years ago I found The Graham Norton Show on YouTube, and watched all the episodes and compilations and "best ofs" that I could find. When I discovered that Mr. Norton had written a novel, I bought it eagerly. Then it fell behind other books on my overloaded bookshelf and it was forgotten until a few weeks back when I decided to clear out the aforementioned shelves.

I don't know what I was expecting, but Holding is a lovely little book. Full of warmth and love for his Irish homeland, the book made me long for a plane ticket and a car to drive around the Emerald Isle. I spent a day in Dublin once, but I've not seen the countryside, at least I hadn't until I read this story.

Sergeant PJ Collins is stationed in Duneen, a small community in which nothing really happens, and where his job consists of directing traffic, and giving out speeding tickets. PJ is obese and horribly self-conscious. He's never had a wife or a family and he is lonely. Some new houses are being built just outside the village and a body of a young male is found. Some months later the body of an infant is found nearby. Suddenly PJ has a lot to do, and he learns that he can do it well. He also learns that despite his self-hatred that there are women who find him attractive, and so his confidence in his job and in his personal life soars.

Of course there are lots of twists and turns in the plot, some of them quite shocking, and I found myself impressed by how deft a hand Norton has at writing mysteries. More than anything he writes about people, and the events just tumble into one another as they do in real life. The book made me smile, and in one spot I teared up. It's a very good debut novel, and I know that there are two more, which I will also seek out. ( )

A strong little sleepy village mystery novel. ( )

Yikes. What could have been a solid little mystery was buried under unnecessary fluff. A small Irish town full of dull, terrible, sexually repressed people is jostled by the discovery of some human remains. I could’ve lived my whole life and not had Graham Norton read… things to me. I’ll never be the same. ( )

You will note that this is the second time I have read this novel. My earlier review is here ( I first read it about 3 years ago)

This time I am reading it for discussion with my U3A Crime Fiction group. This is the first book we are reading this year, and I think they will enjoy it.

We will be basing some of our discussion on some questions listed at The Reading Agency (listed on Amazon)

Duneen is a quiet place, far enough from the big towns to have kept its own rhythms. Its residents include cast down policeman PJ who lives a lonely, uneventful life punctuated only by the next meal – until now; the beautiful and mysterious family of three spinster sisters each with their own secrets and
sorrows; and of course, the town's gossip who think she knows the answers. When a grim discovery is made on a building site up by the old school, it becomes the catalyst for half lived secrets and seething rivalries to come to light and this silent, once innocent and repressed-seeming town is revealed to have
a much darker, hungrier undertow

The other resources that I've found which we may use in our discussion are some short You Tube videos:

Graham Norton reading an extract
Character introduction : Evelyn Ross

Both of these videos comment on the significance of the novel's title.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

4.6, HOME STRETCH ( )

Right from the start I was hooked on this book and read it quite quickly despite the busyness of the season. Characters, setting, and of course the unfolding of their lives and their secrets was all very enjoyable. A good first novel. ( )