Key Details
- Narrator: Norton narrates his own memoir, though most reviews on file weigh in on the writing rather than the audio delivery specifically.
- Subjects: love and loss across an Irish childhood, celebrity, and everyday obsessions like Dolly Parton and dogs
- Tone: warm, candid, occasionally repetitive
- Bottom line: an enjoyable listen for existing fans, though longtime readers of Norton's other books may recognize some recycled ground.
Ten years is a long gap between memoirs, long enough that the person writing the second one is, by his own account, a genuinely different man than the one who wrote the first. This audiobook is Graham Norton's second memoir, narrated by Norton himself, and it is built around a theme simple enough to survive that decade of change: love, in all its forms, and what loving certain things and certain people says about who you turn out to be.
Norton organizes the book thematically rather than chronologically, moving from his Irish childhood through the people, animals, and habits he's loved and sometimes lost along the way, Dolly Parton, dogs, wine, and Ireland itself among them. One reviewer, describing it as his second memoir, puts it plainly: the point isn't a tidy timeline of his career, it's an inventory of affection, assembled by a man who has spent nearly twenty years professionally observing what makes other people interesting and has now turned that same attention on himself.
The result, going by the five reviews on file, lands somewhere between warm and uneven. Readers consistently describe it as funny and candid, with one calling it an entertaining hug of a book and another comparing it to sharing a bottle of wine with a witty, observant friend. But a third reviewer pushes back specifically on repetition, noting that while some material is expanded here, a fair amount felt like deja vu, entertaining but not quite enough of a new tale to justify a second full memoir on its own terms.
One reader, having come to the book after discovering Norton's show and his novel The Keepers, describes spending an entire summer working through everything he'd written, two novels and two memoirs, before landing on this one. That's a useful data point in itself: it suggests a body of work substantial enough to sustain that kind of binge, and it's the same reader who later flags the repetition issue, having simply read more of Norton's output than most other reviewers here.
Norton's Own Voice Behind the Talk-Show Timing
Norton reading his own material is the obvious draw for anyone who already knows him from his talk show, where, according to one reviewer, his fantastic timing and skill managing guests are the whole appeal. A host built on comic timing narrating his own book, rather than handing that timing to someone else, is a reasonable bet, and the reviews consistently praise his voice on the page, calling him a brilliant writer with characteristic humour and outrageous candour, in the listing's own phrasing.
Worth flagging honestly, though: most of the reviews on file are from Kindle Customer accounts, engaging with the book as text rather than commenting on the audio performance specifically. That's not unusual for a title with this much crossover appeal, but it means the enthusiasm here is really about Norton's writing and persona more than it is direct testimony about his reading. If you're drawn to this book because you already enjoy hearing him talk, that's still a reasonable bet given how consistently his TV voice comes through in what people say about the prose itself.
It also helps that Norton has built a career on exactly the skill this format rewards: reading a room, adjusting tone on the fly, and knowing when a story needs a pause before the punchline lands. None of the reviews describe his audio performance directly, but the raw material, twenty years of live television timing, is at least the right background for someone narrating his own candid, conversational prose rather than someone else's script.
A 4.2 That Only Works With Rounding
The repetition critique deserves real weight. One reviewer, who has read Norton's other books including his novel The Keepers and an earlier memoir, calls this one tedious in places, good content recycled rather than freshly mined, and not quite enough of a new tale to market as such. If you've already read his first memoir or followed his other writing closely, some overlap seems likely, even if most other reviewers didn't flag it as a problem.
On the numbers, the listing shows a 4.2 average across eight ratings, a figure that only really works if you assume some rounding or truncation in how it's displayed, so I won't try to reconstruct exactly which scores produced it. Take the average as a general signal of solid reception rather than a precise data point, and weigh it against the specific praise and the specific complaint above, since both come from people who clearly know his other work well.
A Chat Over a Glass or Five
This suits existing fans of Norton's talk show and his easy, observational humour, along with readers who enjoy candid celebrity memoirs organized around theme rather than timeline. Anyone who wants an evening that feels, as one reviewer put it, like a chat with a funny and observant friend over a glass or five of wine will likely get exactly that.
Skip it if you've already read Norton's first memoir closely and want entirely new material, since at least one careful reader found meaningful overlap between the two. It's also worth knowing going in that this book was published back in 2014, so listeners hoping for anything about his more recent decade won't find it here, it stops well short of the present.
For a relatively short listen, under seven hours, it makes a reasonable option for anyone wanting a single-weekend memoir rather than a multi-week commitment, and Norton's reputation for finding humour and common ground in whatever life brings, as the listing describes him, carries through even in the sections that cover harder, sadder material.
Between the praise for his timing and the specific complaint about repetition, the overall picture is of a comedian who remains reliably entertaining even when covering some of the same emotional ground twice, which is a fair trade for most listeners who aren't reading his catalog as closely as the one reviewer who caught the overlap.
Does Graham Norton narrate The Life and Loves of a He Devil audiobook himself?
Yes, Norton is credited as both author and narrator. Most of the written reviews on file come from Kindle readers rather than audio listeners specifically, so while his authorship is confirmed, direct listener commentary on the audiobook performance itself is limited.
Is this Graham Norton's first memoir or a follow-up?
It's his second. One reviewer notes it arrived roughly ten years after his previous book, and the listing itself is organized around the theme of love rather than a strict chronology, distinguishing it from a standard follow-up memoir built purely on career updates and recent news.
How long is The Life and Loves of a He Devil audiobook?
The audiobook runs 6 hours and 58 minutes, making it a shorter, single-sitting-friendly listen compared to many celebrity memoirs, which suits its thematic, chapter-by-chapter structure around specific loves and losses rather than a dense, decade-spanning career retrospective demanding a longer commitment.
