Forever Home: THIS AUTUMN'S MUST-READ NOVEL FROM GRAHAM NORTON

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Home Stretch” has made me more conflicted after finishing it than any other I’ve read in recent memory. There is so much good in this book that is marred by some truly abysmal choices and shoddy penmanship and it’s hard to come up with a coherent verdict.

SHAPIRO: It's not disclosures about the inner life. It is just a sort of, like, filling the air with sounds. But Moira comes up with a brilliant idea! She and Dave will secretly put a bid on the house and buy it! Carol is horrified but can't stop the train which Moira seems to be on from going off the rails!I really hope readers enjoy losing themselves in the twists and turns of this tale as much as I have." I love the scene where Connor's nephew Finbarr, who's also gay but who's had an altogether easier time of it, is reflecting on all the people who fought for the changed world he lives in. Tell me about that moment. To me, as I read Home Stretch, it seemed like the central theme was sexuality — about Connor discovering his own and coming to terms with it over a lifetime. But I read an interview where you said that wasn't the case? What was central in your mind while you were writing?

A small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony a group of young friends, including the bride and groom, drive to the beach. There is an accident; 3 survive, 3 die. The lives of the families are shattered and rifts form. Connor is one of the survivors but staying in the angry town is as hard as living with the shame of being the driver. He leaves, taking his secrets with him. His journey leads to New York. The city is somewhere he can forget his past and forge a new life. But the secrets, unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. Connor will have to confront his past. NORTON: ...As she drives along. A kind of - I wouldn't like to live there. She always has washing out. That dog looked killed (ph). And - until finally you get to where you're going and you've parked wrong. And that's... One fateful day in 1987 will change the lives of so many in an instant. The small Irish village is preparing for a wedding he next day. But tragedy strikes when an accident on the way home from a day at the beach kills 3 of their own. The 3 survivors have to live with the guilt and shame. The village will never be the same again. The families and friends of the deceased changed forever. It is too much for the driver, Connor, to beat and he leaves the country for a new life, a fresh start where nobody knows what happened.You almost feel there is a little piece of Norton the teenager in this novel and what it was like to be young and gay growing up in a small town in Ireland. I enjoyed this aspect of the novel and the fact that it was set in the 1980s which I could identify with. SHAPIRO: And yet you were well into your career before you started writing fiction. When you began as an author, you started as a memoirist. What made you decide to make that move?

Sports journalist Clare Balding has swapped being behind the cameras for travelling around the country and meeting lots of dogs, in preparation for her latest book.

Forever Home

Over the last 15 years, David Walliams has become one of the best-selling children’s authors in the UK with his surreal stories and wild imagination.