A KEEPER by Graham Norton

Two women - Patricia and Elizabeth - mother and daughter. Two houses - one that Elizabeth spent her childhood in with her mother that she inherits after her mother dies, and a second house in an isolated spot in West Cork that Elizabeth, with some surprise, also finds herself in possession of on her mother's death. Two time lines - one in the present, one in the 1970s. And lots of secrets.

This is  novel of secrets, who keeps them and how they are kept. Small town life has always been an overflowing Pandora's box of secrets. Tossed around with the morally conservative and religious elements that have controlled how the Irish have lived since forever, it is not surprising that very potent forces emerge to keep the curtain twitchers ecstatically happy, amongst the unfolding of many personal tragedies.

And what great novels and story telling these domestic secrets, catastrophes and mishaps create. Graham Norton showed in his first novel Holding that he can tell a terrific story, with sensitive characterisation and so much empathy for the situations his troubled characters find themselves in.

Elizabeth lives in New York, divorced, with a teenage son. She returns to her old home town in Ireland on the death of her mother to clean the house out, tidy up, deal with her extended family. She never knew her father, and so is intrigued and puzzled when she finds a box of letters from a man she assumes is her father to her mother prior to her birth. An even more tantalising mystery unfolds when she finds she has also inherited a house in West Cork where it seems that her father came from.

Elizabeth's story alternates with that of her mother Patricia, who is in her early 30s. She has cared for her own mother for many years, and on her mother's death suddenly finds that not only does she own her own home,  she is also free for the first time ever. But oh so lonely. At age 32 Patricia is well and truly on the shelf, and at the urging of a friend finds herself signing up for a lonely hearts agency. To her surprise she begins to receive letters from Edward Foley and before she knows it, without actually knowing how she got there, she is living in the Foley home with Edward and his mother. What follows may stretch the limits of imagination a bit, with a definite flavour of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, but it all makes for a damn captivating and engrossing tale as Patricia's story unfolds, and Elizabeth finally learns the mysteries of her own origins.

Family connections are a strong theme throughout, not only with what is going on in Ireland in the two different decades, but also in Elizabeth's own family,  her teenage son having troubles of his own. Drifting down through the generations, the ties of blood prove to be stronger than one would think or even wish, but the identity and sense of belonging that comes from being in a family does win out over all other things.