Turning for Home, Barney Norris
Turning for Home, Barney Norris
List: $11.25 | Sale: $7.88
Club: $5.62

Turning for Home

Author: Barney Norris

Narrator: Timothy West, Paul Hickey, Eleanor Wyld

Unabridged: 7 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/11/2018


Synopsis

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Turning for Home by Barney Norris, read by Eleanor Wyld, Paul Hickey and Timothy West.

'Isn’t the life of any person made up out of the telling of two tales, after all? People live in the space between the realities of their lives and the hopes they have for them. The whole world makes more sense if you remember that everyone has two lives, their real lives and their dreams, both stories only a tape’s breadth apart from each other, impossibly divided, indivisibly close.'

Every year, Robert's family come together at a rambling old house to celebrate his birthday. Aunts, uncles, distant cousins - it has been a milestone in their lives for decades. But this year Robert doesn't want to be reminded of what has happened since they last met - and neither, for quite different reasons, does his granddaughter Kate. Neither of them is sure they can face the party. But for both Robert and Kate, it may become the most important gathering of all.

As lyrical and true to life as Norris's critically acclaimed debut Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, which won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, this is a compelling, emotional story of family, human frailty, and the marks that love leaves on us.

'One of our most exciting young writers' - The Times

'Norris writes beautifully, unearthing extraordinary depths in the everyday... a memorable writer, mature beyond his years.' - Sunday Times

'Norris has a gift for tapping in to ordinary lives and finding the extraordinary in them' - Daily Mail

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on June 16, 2018

In Ireland, starving was always about honour. The old way among the peasants of that country, as I understand it, was that if someone had wronged you, you sat down at their doorway and went on hunger strike. And if you died there at the person’s door, they were forever dishonoured, and reparation......more

Goodreads review by Paul on November 26, 2017

There ought to be truth and reconciliation in every stratum of the lives people lead. Barney Norris is a very talented young writer - playwright, poet and novelist - and his debut novel Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain was certainly striking if, to my taste, rather flawed (see [URL not allowed]......more

Goodreads review by Ends of the Word on May 24, 2019

4.5* The “Boston Tapes” were an oral history project about the Irish Troubles, commenced by Boston College in 2001. Researchers conducted interviews with both republicans and loyalists, on the understanding that the transcripts of the interviews would not be released to the authorities, at least unti......more

Goodreads review by Karen on January 16, 2018

I finished Turning For Home last week and I've been putting off writing this review because I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find the words that do this exquisitely beautiful book justice. The story is told through the perspectives of Robert and his granddaughter, Kate as they narrate alternate c......more

Goodreads review by Leilah on January 13, 2018

His birthday has always been the event that draws his extended family together. In his 80th year, the first since the loss of his wife, Robert sees that faces are beginning to ebb away. Granddaughter Kate, adrift on a different sea of sadness and struggle, has returned to pick at the frayed ends of......more


Quotes

Courageous . . . memorable . . . so moving that one wonders why as a society we are so much more eager to hear about young love than old . . . it is incidental moments that remain vivid in memory once the book is closed, small glimpses of unsuspected inner lives. Guardian

This novel firmly establishes Barney as one of the most insightful and attuned writers of his generation. He negotiates all the huge and hugely important themes - love, family, loss, conflict, pain, the storm-blown paths we all travel - with such grace and absolute empathy. It's a life-affirming, beautiful and achingly poignant book.

Deeply moving . . . readers would do well to make the acquaintance of Barney Norris, who has the potential to become a hugely significant novelist in the decades ahead.

Norris handles his themes – loneliness, regret, reconciliation – with great sensitivity’ The Observer

Utterly convincing...profound and elegiac Daily Mail

Remember the name Barney Norris. He's a new writer in his mid-twenties, but already outstanding. The Times

Everything he writes about love, loss, grief, desolation and moments of hope and illumination rings absolutely true. It's the real stuff.

Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent Evening Standard

Impressive Financial Times

Turning for Home is a resonant portrayal of memory, and Barney Norris a writer of impressive talent. Times Literary Supplement