Home Stretch by Graham Norton

 Publisher: Coronet

362 pages

Book Club read

Blurb

It is 1987 and a small Irish community is shattered by a terrible accident. Young Connor is one of the survivors, but staying among the angry and the mourning is more than he can bear. He leaves the only place he knows, taking his secrets with him.

But the unspoked longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to confront his past.

 

Review

 Careful: This review contains spoilers

Honestly? I find the blurb I copied from the back cover of the paperback rather insufficient. When I marked the book on Goodreads, I found the following book description and it works a lot better for me.

 

In this “compelling, bighearted, emotionally precise page-turner” (Sunday Times), the New York Times bestselling writer and acclaimed television host explores the aftermath of a tragedy on a small-town to illuminate the shame and longing that can flow through generations—and how the secrets of the heart cannot stay buried forever.

It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony, a group of young friends, including the bride and groom, are involved in an accident. Three survive. Three are killed.

The lives of the families are shattered and the rifts between them ripple throughout the small town. Connor survived, but living among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as carrying the shame of having been the driver. He leaves the only place he knows for another life, taking his secrets with him. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, he eventually makes a home—of sorts—for himself in New York, where he finds shelter and the possibility of forging a new life.

But the secrets—the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind—will not be silenced. Before long, Connor will have to confront his past.

A powerful and timely novel of emigration and return, Home Stretch demonstrates Norton’s keen understanding of the power of stigma and secrecy—and their devastating effect on ordinary lives.

Now for my thoughts:

I have to be honest and start by saying that it took me a few chapters to fully get into this story. Initially, it felt as if I was told far less than I needed to know in order to appreciate what exactly was going on. As it turned out, I was right. What was more, that was exactly what I should be feeling. This story is cleverly composed in such a way that the truth about what really happened and about Connor and Martin, in particular, is only revealed slowly by means of small hints that eventually build up to huge truths.

This story broke my heart several times. It starts with the day of the crash and that in itself was a devastating scene. What follows just makes matters worse. Poor Connor is basically banished from the place where he grew up, only to find himself alone and lost again not much later when his true nature is discovered by one of his housemates in Liverpool.

Which brings me to one aspect of the story that made me both sad and furious. To this day there are those who hate what they are themselves so much that they will take it out on others who are exactly like them. I guess beating up yourself is all but impossible, whereas unleashing that anger on others is relatively easy, but that doesn’t make that form of self-hatred less horrific and devastating.

To think that young Connor would rather have people thinking that he’d killed three other people through reckless driving than have them find out that he’s gay is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever read. Especially since I have no doubt that for all too many (young) people the fear of being ‘outed’ is so deep and ingrained that they would rather be seen as something – anything – else, no matter how despicable.

But, the flipside of Connor’s banishment and him being forced to find his own feet at a very early age means that his journey made for fascinating reading. The secrets from the past hold him back for so long; he avoids any and all contact with the family he left behind in Ireland for decades. But, while he goes through ups and downs and it takes him a very long time to become his own man rather than what he thinks others want him to be, it is an interesting and eye-opening journey.

All characters in this story are flawed. For a long time, everybody in this book allows their fears, prejudices, and insecurities to direct their path through life. It is easy to sit in judgment of people’s actions when you’re ‘only’ the reader. The wonderful thing about this book is that no matter how questionable some actions and decisions are, by the end of the book, not only did those choices make sense, but they also led to better, healthier choices.

While it is easy to pinpoint Martin as the villain in this story, I think that would be too easy. While I have certainly had my own ups and downs in self-confidence, I can’t imagine making it to the age of forty or fifty without ever being able to just be who I am. Sure, every single act of Martin’s was despicable, but by the end of the book, it was impossible not to wonder if the biggest victim of Martin’s actions wasn’t Martin himself.

While Home Stretch is very much a story about a man coming to terms with who he is and his past before he can find his way to himself, it is also the story about Ireland and generations of people who were forced to flee everything they knew because the community they lived in wasn’t capable of seeing beyond the values they were spoon-fed from the moment they were born and, for far too long, saw as more important than even the people they were supposed to love unconditionally.

Over the decades described in this book, Ireland has come a long way and it would be nice to think that situations like the one young Connor found himself in are now a thing from the past. I fear that the reality isn’t quite as rosy. We’ve come a long way, but I feel we’ve got an equally long way still to go.

My final thought is that it proved impossible to read this book without wondering how much of Connor’s experiences were taken straight from the author’s life. Not the accident, but the feeling that the place where you were born, where your family continues to live, can no longer be your home feels pulled straight from the heart. Which makes me very happy that, eventually, both Connor and Graham Norton found their way back home, even if it was after a long stretch.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

352 pages

Reading Group Read

Blurb

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. By all rights their paths should never cross, but Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles' mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But then word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus journeys with Achilles to Troy, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.

My Review

Decades ago, when I was still in primary school so definitely no older than 12, I wrote a paper about the Trojan War, using a book about Greek Myths and Legends as my source. I don’t have the book anymore, but I remember it well because it was the first time I read one of my mother’s books…an adult book.

More than 40 years have passed since I wrote that paper and to say my memories of the stories I read back then is limited would be a gross understatement. In fact, what while I perfectly remember loving those stories, most of the details in them have long since evaporated from my memory.

Having said that, I did remember enough about Achilles to know that he was an almost immortal half-god who still managed to get himself killed during the Trojan war. I can’t say I remembered anything about his companion, Patroclus though; not before I read A Song of Achilles, not while I was mesmerized by that story, and not now that I’ve finished the book. And, since I don’t have access to my Mother’s book anymore (and can’t for the life of me remember what it was called) I can’t check if I don’t remember him because he just wasn’t there or because my memory is faulty. 😊

But yes, it’s fair to say that I picked this book for my Reading Group because of my love of the Greek myths. And it is more than fair to say that after reading Song of Achilles that love has turned a bit stronger than it always was. Having said that, what I loved about this book was the all too human love story between Achilles and Patroclus as they moved from an unlikely but unbreakable friendship to the sort of relationship dreams are made of.

Not that the book diminishes the mythical side of their story. The weird, wonderful, and cruel ways of the Gods play a huge role in this book. How could they not when one of our heroes is the son of a water nymph, when a cyclops tutors Achilles and Patroclus, and the various Greek Gods go out of their way to influence the outcome of the war.

But, despite the myths, the magic, the impossible feats of fighting, what stood out for me in this book was the love between Achilles and Patroclus. The half-god prince and the exiled nobody made such a beautiful pair. Patroclus’ love for Achilles was breath taking right from the start. Since the book is mostly told from Patroclus’ point of view it isn’t until the very end of the story that we discover to what extent Achilles returns that feeling.

For me this book had everything a good read requires: a thrilling story-line, a mesmerizing love story, tension, heartbreak, and redemption. Of course, I couldn’t call this story a romance; in order to ‘earn’ that label the two main characters need to have reached their happily ever after by the time the story ends.

Although…I guess it all depends on your definition of ‘happily’ because the ‘ever after’ is never in doubt.

All in all this was, for me, a wonderful book to celebrate our first centenary of book discussions.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

Reading Group Read

301 pages

Blurb

Twice Booker-shortlisted author Sebastian Barry returns with a sensational new novel set in mid-19th Century America, an intensely poignant story of two men and the lives they are dealt.

'Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on for ever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now...'

Having signed up for the US army in the 1850s, aged barely seventeen, Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, go on to fight in the Indian wars and, ultimately, the Civil War.

Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, they find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they both see and are complicit in.

Moving from the plains of the West to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry's latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. Both an intensely poignant story of two men and the lives they are dealt, and a fresh look at some of the most fateful years in America's past, Days Without End is a novel never to be forgotten.

Review        

“John Cole was my love, all my love”

I have to be honest and admit that I’m somewhat at a loss as to what to write about this book. The only thing I’m sure about is that I’m intrigued by it for several reasons.

For starters there’s the way ‘Days Without End’ was written. Thomas McNulty is the narrator of this story and we get to hear it in his own, uneducated, voice. And there were moments when his voice drove me up the wall, irritated me. At times, the way in which the story unfolded felt like little more than a rendering of facts and the temptation to skim was almost irresistible. And then there were instances of such vibrant simplicity, that I found myself reading the same sentence or paragraph three or four times in a row, because I couldn’t get enough of it.

“You had to love John Cole for what he chose never to say.”

Reading this book was, to me, almost like reading two stories, the contrast between which was stark.

On one side there is Thomas and John’s military life, fighting both against Indians and in the Civil War. The descriptions of battles and slaughter are brutally honest and vivid, as are Thomas’s feelings about what they have to do.

“We wanted the enemy stilled and destroyed so that we could live ourselves.”

I wouldn’t have missed about half those battles and fights if they’d been left out; after a while they felt like overkill (pun intended). But a different reader may well find that aspect of the book fascinating. Just as other readers may feel less strongly than I did about the second storyline.

I however was mesmerized by the beautiful and understated story of the love between John and Thomas.

“And then we quietly fucked and then we slept.”

Because it is really ‘just’ a story of their love. They don’t encounter any problems. Not while they work as dancing ‘girls’ — when Thomas discovers that he prefers dresses and enjoys being Thomasina — not while they’re in the army, not when they take a young Indian girl under their wing, and not when they return to civilian life. Their love just is. And while the story does once or twice mention the need to be careful and secretive, Thomas and John are never in any danger as a result of their relationship. Used as I am to the MM romance arc, their story was almost anti-climatic and all the more refreshing for it.

Then again, maybe the book is a lot more than those two stories. Maybe it’s the totality of one man’s life; the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the brutal and the heartwarming. Thomas doesn’t hide who he is, what he has done, or how he felt about it. Not all of it is beautiful or honourable, but by the end of the book Thomas(ina) had nestled their way into my heart.

See what I mean when I say I don’t know what to say about this book, or how I feel about it?

I do however know that I love the title. ‘Days Without End’; those days when we were young and convinced we would live forever. The days we don’t appreciate until they’re long behind us.

“I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it’s not like that now.”

Which brings me back to the language in which this book is written. It seems to me that there’s a beautiful conceit to this book. While the language appears to be ungrammatical and simple, this tale is filled with thoughts, observations and ideas that made me stop and think, such as this inspired little gem:

“A man’s memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can’t do much about that. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards.”

Or this one:

"
"His skin is made of the aftermath of smiles.”

So I guess I’ll give this book a very solid four stars. It was a bit too easy for me to put down to give it five stars. But I know without a doubt that this book, this story, and these characters will stay with me for a long time. And that counts for a lot.