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Turning for Home by Barney Norris: book review


 

Turning for Home (2018) is set in Wiltshire, England, in contemporary times. 

 

Kate has reluctantly come from Bristol to stay with her grandfather during the annual family reunion for his birthday. She never got on well with her mother Hannah and she didn’t feel like facing the rest of the family. And her boyfriend Sam didn’t want to go with her.

 

The reunion is large, with aunts, uncles, and distant cousins, all congregating in the old family home. They don’t stay overnight in the house like Kate does. In fact, Robert thinks Kate should come and live with him permanently – just the two of them, because they think so much alike. 

 

Grandfather Robert Shawcross is celebrating his 80thbirthday, and he’s been holding these birthday reunions for 40 years. But this year, he doesn’t really want to see the rest of the family, now that his wife Hattie has died. 

 

Kate and her grandfather understand each other. They have both had an extremely difficult year. He thinks “Kate is an angel for trying as hard as she does to make conversation with an old man.” 

 

On the day of the reunion, Robert has a visitor that brings up memories of his past life in Belfast, Ireland. Professor Frank Dunn from Queen’s University in Belfast didn’t realise it was a family reunion, so the meeting with grandfather Robert was a secret. Dunn wanted to discuss the Enniskillen incident in November 1987. 

 

Kate too has a surprise visitor at the reunion. 

 

Although the reunion was a regular occurence, this one is the most important and life changing for both grandfather and granddaughter. This is a touching story about past lives and consequences.




 

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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