Graham Swift - Waterland, 03 Sep 2008
I've read so many great books of late that I'm constantly surprised that each one betters the next! After reading Richard Yates' superb Revolutionary Road, I knew that was a hard act to follow, but Waterland not only followed it well, but bettered it. It is certainly one of the best British novels that I've ever read, a masterpiece of original narration. It is, of course, the narrative that is the absolute crowning achievement of this: Swift tell's various stories here, all mappped over one another, in varying chapters and interlocking in various ways: we have the contemporary story of Tom Crick, a history teacher being forced into early retirement, who narrates the book in a series of "lectures" to his final class. Then we have the story of Crick's childhood in the Fens, his life with his family and friends and tales of growing up, which include murder, young love and suicide. Crick also narrates to his students the wider story of the Crick family, his ancestors and how they came to their place in the Fens. He sets all of this against the wider backdrop of events in history such as the French Revolution, and the the geographical history of the Fen landscape, and how humans have shaped it over various stages in time. Put like that, it sounds dry, but it really isn't at all. Every strand of it is fascinating, and very lively to read. Swift's style, in Crick's narration, is a masterpiece of wordsmithing, playful, intelligent, witty, pyrotechnic in a subtle, fun way.

It's a seriously excellent book, Waterland. An examination of one man's life and ancestral history, an exploration into the purposes and philosophies inherent in the studying and uses of history itself, and a thrilling mystery. There's more than one mysterious death, here. There are ghosts, incest, elemental raging in the form of floods and fires, kidnapping, and much tragedy. Crick is a fab protagonist, and it's sometimes surprising that the warmest sections of the book are the chapters of his interactions with his classroom of children. I can't recommend this multi-layered, superbly told story highly enough. It's a great literary achievement, and keeps its mysteries to the final page. Exciting, thrilling language, and muchly thought-provoking as to the concept of "history". Buy it soon. Buy it now.

Complex and thrilling, 01 Jul 2008
When all is said and done, Waterland is a cracking yarn of murder and bonking against a fenland backdrop. But what's special about this macabre literary thriller is the way the story is told. The narrator (a history teacher, Tom Crick, who is also the key protagonist) interleaves the central narrative (set in 1943) with scenes from his troubled present (1983), evocative detours into the eventful history of his family, and philosophical musings on the uses of history. The strange chapters in this final category are reminiscent of Tolstoy's essay-chapters in War and Peace; and, like Tolstoy, Swift somehow gets away with it. In fact, the sinuous structure of the novel only adds to the suspense: just as you think you're approaching a revelation, the narrator goes off on a new tangent. It works brilliantly, because the novel's central mystery (what exactly happened in 1943?) puts a voltage across the entire book, sucking you onwards towards the end.

Graham Swift - Waterland, 03 Sep 2008
I've read so many great books of late that I'm constantly surprised that each one betters the next! After reading Richard Yates' superb Revolutionary Road, I knew that was a hard act to follow, but Waterland not only followed it well, but bettered it. It is certainly one of the best British novels that I've ever read, a masterpiece of original narration. It is, of course, the narrative that is the absolute crowning achievement of this: Swift tell's various stories here, all mappped over one another, in varying chapters and interlocking in various ways: we have the contemporary story of Tom Crick, a history teacher being forced into early retirement, who narrates the book in a series of "lectures" to his final class. Then we have the story of Crick's childhood in the Fens, his life with his family and friends and tales of growing up, which include murder, young love and suicide. Crick also narrates to his students the wider story of the Crick family, his ancestors and how they came to their place in the Fens. He sets all of this against the wider backdrop of events in history such as the French Revolution, and the the geographical history of the Fen landscape, and how humans have shaped it over various stages in time. Put like that, it sounds dry, but it really isn't at all. Every strand of it is fascinating, and very lively to read. Swift's style, in Crick's narration, is a masterpiece of wordsmithing, playful, intelligent, witty, pyrotechnic in a subtle, fun way.

It's a seriously excellent book, Waterland. An examination of one man's life and ancestral history, an exploration into the purposes and philosophies inherent in the studying and uses of history itself, and a thrilling mystery. There's more than one mysterious death, here. There are ghosts, incest, elemental raging in the form of floods and fires, kidnapping, and much tragedy. Crick is a fab protagonist, and it's sometimes surprising that the warmest sections of the book are the chapters of his interactions with his classroom of children. I can't recommend this multi-layered, superbly told story highly enough. It's a great literary achievement, and keeps its mysteries to the final page. Exciting, thrilling language, and muchly thought-provoking as to the concept of "history". Buy it soon. Buy it now.

Complex and thrilling, 01 Jul 2008
When all is said and done, Waterland is a cracking yarn of murder and bonking against a fenland backdrop. But what's special about this macabre literary thriller is the way the story is told. The narrator (a history teacher, Tom Crick, who is also the key protagonist) interleaves the central narrative (set in 1943) with scenes from his troubled present (1983), evocative detours into the eventful history of his family, and philosophical musings on the uses of history. The strange chapters in this final category are reminiscent of Tolstoy's essay-chapters in War and Peace; and, like Tolstoy, Swift somehow gets away with it. In fact, the sinuous structure of the novel only adds to the suspense: just as you think you're approaching a revelation, the narrator goes off on a new tangent. It works brilliantly, because the novel's central mystery (what exactly happened in 1943?) puts a voltage across the entire book, sucking you onwards towards the end.

Writer's strengths in this case show as weaknesses, 15 Jul 2008
Like several reviewers, I too always appreciate Swift's writing; this time, it is sadly disappointing. The ability to reach inside a character and trace history back (or forwards) through time and circumstance, the ability to create layered and complex characterisation just don't cohere here.

I think the basic structure is flawed and perhaps a more conventional time line would have worked better in this instance. I sussed what the denoument would be within the first few pages (honestly!) ; as soon as the news of revelation, on your 16th birthday, tomorrow, I knew what 'it' was.

The revelation didn't actually matter but the central character never naming it in her head, upfront, began to seem more and more like a writer's trick; too clever by half for its own good. I felt SWIFT was teasing me, and this trick destroyed the narrator's credibility - his device, not hers. The story could have worked equally well if Paula had started with the revelation and her fears about making it, and then back tracked the whole development.

The relationship itself also seemed to not quite work - I don't think I'm being unduly cynical, but the perfection and sweet understanding of an almost fairy-tale relationship just seemed to lack depth. Paula and Mikey were just TOO light, there seemed very little shadow, not even the one incident where Paula makes a suspect decision, leading to a further secret she must keep. In fact, I'd even say her rationale for the act doesn't make a lot of sense, just further writer devices!

I've given it a 2 star rating because it is so far below Swift's usual standards. If this would have been a first-time author, I probably would have gone 3.

tedious beyond words, 24 Jun 2008
I wish I had read the reviews here before I bought this book. I too am a huge Swift fan and own all his books but this was unbelievably turgid. I had to drag myself from page to page and in the end gave up, totally hating the narrator and wondering what all the fuss was about.

What kind of a judgment day will tomorrow be?, 10 May 2008
The tone is unmistakeably Graham Swiftian: the monologues - the looking back from a given moment to the past - a secret to be in due course revealed - the odd tangential idea in brackets - lots of questions inside the monologue - musings about biological processes in the human and the animal world - a feeling for landscape. I have loved all those features in Swift's earlier novels, but I have to say, it took longer in this novel than in the previous ones for me to feel involved. The first half of the book, as far as plot and tension are concerned, falls, in my view, a good deal short of his previous work.

Paula has twin children, Kate and Nick, now aged sixteen. She loves them dearly, just as she does her husband Michael. She lies awake during the night, tensed up about what would happen tomorrow; for tomorrow Michael would tell the children something they did not know, something Michael and Paula had decided years ago the children would be told once they had reached the age of sixteen, something that might change their lives for ever, though Paula hopes that they will be resilient enough to cope, because, after all, in 1995 the modern young are `cooler' and more mature than their parents were at that age in the early 1960s. And they do have each other, in that special way that twins have.

In her long internal monologue that night, Paula does not get to the first revelation until page 152, and I have to say that only a relatively small part of what she says about her life and that of Michael before the children were born is relevant to that revelation. We learn quite a bit about Paula's and Michael's parents and about their careers, which is easy enough reading and has some sociological interest also; but, when reconsidered after I had read the book, it seemed like padding out, something that wasn't going anywhere in particular - a suspicion I had even when I was reading it at the time. Also, quite some time before page 152 I had some idea of what the revelation might be; and when it came, it did not seem all that shattering - although, as we get a picture of the kind of person Paula was (and the way Graham Swift empathizes with her as a woman is one of the strengths of the novel), one can understand that it had haunted her life.

But I found the ninety-odd pages of the monologue that followed the first revelation very much more interesting, more subtle, and more relevant to the situation than the part that preceded it - indeed so magnificent (and in one passage so powerful and moving) that, for all the weaker first part, I have to give the book five stars.








Tomorrow takes forever to arrive, 19 Mar 2008
In Tomorrow, Graham Swift's novel published in 2007, he employs the same technique he used in Light of Day. Light of Day involved a detective mulling, over the course of a single day, over past events and piecing the fragments together to form a cohesive and striking story.

In Tomorrow, the person doing the thinking is Paula Hook, art dealer, ex 60s' chick and mother of sixteen year-old twins. Only it's more like pontification than thinking. Paula is awake through the night and dreading the next day when her husband Mike, a biologist who gave up studying snails to work on and eventually edit a popular science magazine, is going to confess something shocking to the twins; something that will change their lives forever. But a premise like this where the narrator is building up to a shocking revelation is dependent on delaying relating the crucial event for as long as possible. This can lead to a book built on a somewhat flimsy notion where the reader is grinding their teeth with impatience for the narrator to spit it out. And it also requires the confession to be truly awful or mind boggling when it's eventually revealed.


The fact that when Paula does eventually spit it out the event in question is not hugely rare or shocking leads to a feeling of anti-climax after so much build up . There is also something dislikable about Paula. If she is indeed pondering in the way she would talk to her children, she is obviously a self-indulgent and selfish person, burdening the story with cringeably intimate details that would only embarrass a child and serve no purpose whatsoever. For instance, is it essential to this confession to keep referring to the fact that her and her husband were always at it like rabbits on Viagra? It smacks of thoughtless egotism and, far from being crucial to the story, would only add to the twins' trauma. Noone likes to think of their parents making the beast with two backs - why shove this onto the twins' a;ready full plates? There is also something of Anne Enright's narrator in her Booker-winning The Gathering about Paula - the world centres around her.


But perhaps Paula is not articulating her thoughts in the way that she hopes Mike will the next day; perhaps her thoughts are the uncensored, unashamedly egocentric version. In which case the premise of the book is shaken - we are sold the story as a mother's shivery anticipation of the true story her children will be told the next day, and the narration is consistently done in a way that addresses Paula's children.


The idea might have made a gripping short story or perhaps even novelette, but it's way too paper thin to form the backbone of a novel. Paula's irritating style of narration is exacerbated by her constant side tracking to irrelevant details; she refers to the rain pounding down many times and even jumps from a key point to refer to the weather on individual days twenty years before. Who cares? Obviously it would add to the atmosphere if this were a straight novel written contemporaneously, but when the reader is told on page one that a life-changing confession is about to be related, they don't have much patience for witterings about the weather decades before.


This is a great shame because Graham Swift is a writer of many talents. His prose is usually precise and incisive. Last Orders, Waterland and Light of Day were novels with the power to sweep the reader up and transport them, even though Waterland did take a chance with its many diversions to geographical facts about the Fens, and even though Light of Day relied on the memories of one character in a single day.

Here though, in the hands of a middle-aged non literary mother, Swift softens his style so that puns abound and the subject constantly jumps from one time and place to another. The fact that Paula weakly apologizes for her puns and darting about from inconsequential detail to blush-inducing TMI didn't stop me silently grinding my teeth and willing her to get on with it. It's not a bad book by any means - a talented writer like Swift will always have the ability to include mesmerising fragments, even when a concept is flawed. There are still chunks of this book that are gripping and lucidly written, but Paula's overbearing presence is like a shadow over the pages.
Not his best. ***00 1/2

"The future right now is simply tomorrow", 28 Oct 2007
A middle-aged woman narrates this deeply reflective novel as she lies in bed by her husband one rainy and stormy night, restlessly writing a eulogy to her two teenage children about her life and her marriage. It's almost midsummer 1995 and it's a week past Kate and Nick's sixteenth birthday. There's a secret about her family that Paula Hook is propelled to address and in the next morning her husband, Mike will also reveal to Nick and Kate his own version of the dramatic denouement that provides the climax to their lives so far.

Paula's story begins in 1966 when she is only twenty and where she meets Michael while studying at Sussex University near Brighton. On the cusp of the sexual revolution, college life has become rife with possibilities, the birth control pill has just become available to young women and Brighton is considered to be the best and perhaps the coolest place to be.

The choices that are available to a girl like Paula would have been incomprehensible to her parents and the excitement of the new, "the liberated as we sometimes called it," especially attracts Mike. Paula delicately reveals that Mike slept around, sleeping with two her friends in possibly quick succession, and then eventually hooking up with her. In fact, he got into bed with her one night in Brighton nearly thirty years ago and though the place, the room, and even the bed have changed from time to time, Mike has managed to stay with Paula ever since.

Paula was overwhelmed by the fact that Mike's father sent his son twelve bottles of champagne to celebrate their love. A sudden bounty, the champagne comes to symbolize, in a decidedly impetuous and breathless way, the couple's eventual betrothal, even though they didn't actually get married for another four years. Of course, being children of the freewheeling 60's, both Mike and Paula were obliged to scoff at the very idea of marriage.

As the narrative unfolds, Paula begins to reveal ever more about her life with Mike as she thinks back to those early days in the 1970's where Mike began his research on snails, a supposed stepping stone to his brilliant future in science, and where she began a career as a trainee art dealer at Christie's auction house. Without doubt, theirs is one of a positive and upwardly mobile life, that of a steadily married couple in their thirties living in their terraced house in the picaresque London suburb of Herne Hill

Bounded at night by her recollections in this bedroom, in the dark, with the rain smattering away outside, this world for Paula feels like some sort of temporary refuge. She tells her children of life and how short it is, that they should "seize it, treasure it and cradle it," and also of Mike's father who was forced to fly off to his highly possible death in the 2nd World War, even as Paula's own father had a very different war, cracking codes in the cozy depths of the English countryside, surrounded by lots of female clerks, one of which was Paula's mother.

When Paula and Mike discover they are cat people when they obtain a neighborhood cat called Otis. Paula, however, is quick to note that Otis came before, and was never intended to be a replacement for Kate and Nick, even when Otis ended up turning their lives upside down. Then along come the announcements and the reckonings, and the understandings about death, especially that of Grandma Pete when Paula cries her heart out at his funeral at Invercullen, and also of dear Uncle Edie who died when his was only fifty-seven and who gifted Mike a beautiful, leather-bound Victorian book on mollusks.

Thematically the novel is a plea to live one's life to the fullest, no matter how quick and rushing life it sometimes seem, even when can also seem to be slow and sweet and everlasting. Paula's message to her children is of the power of love, and perhaps even a strong measure of forgiveness. Obviously, Paula and Mike have learnt in the past few years, especially how hard it can be to tell what's true and what's false, what's real and what's pretend, and also the critical question of how they both came to make this profound decision which ended up altering their lives.

In languid and measured prose, author Graham Swift characterizes a loving and deeply intuitive marriage over the course of thirty years, the author ultimately infusing his tale with a type of worldly melancholy, but one that is also permeated with immense beauty, as well as the possibilities of great happiness. Paula's revelation comes about three quarters into the story, which causes the rest of the novel to become a bit tedious, save for Swift's leisurely and competent style and his astute observations about life which keep the action moving along at a nice enough pace. Mike Leonard October 07.

From the author of Waterland and Ever After, Last Orders is a quiet but dazzling novel about a group of men, friends since the second world war, whose lives revolve around work, family, the racetrack and their favourite pub. When one of them dies, the survivors drive his ashes from London to a seaside town where they will be scattered, compelling them to take stock of who they are today, who they were before and the shifting relationships in between. Both funny and moving, this won the Booker Prize in 1996.

Graham Swift - Waterland, 03 Sep 2008
I've read so many great books of late that I'm constantly surprised that each one betters the next! After reading Richard Yates' superb Revolutionary Road, I knew that was a hard act to follow, but Waterland not only followed it well, but bettered it. It is certainly one of the best British novels that I've ever read, a masterpiece of original narration. It is, of course, the narrative that is the absolute crowning achievement of this: Swift tell's various stories here, all mappped over one another, in varying chapters and interlocking in various ways: we have the contemporary story of Tom Crick, a history teacher being forced into early retirement, who narrates the book in a series of "lectures" to his final class. Then we have the story of Crick's childhood in the Fens, his life with his family and friends and tales of growing up, which include murder, young love and suicide. Crick also narrates to his students the wider story of the Crick family, his ancestors and how they came to their place in the Fens. He sets all of this against the wider backdrop of events in history such as the French Revolution, and the the geographical history of the Fen landscape, and how humans have shaped it over various stages in time. Put like that, it sounds dry, but it really isn't at all. Every strand of it is fascinating, and very lively to read. Swift's style, in Crick's narration, is a masterpiece of wordsmithing, playful, intelligent, witty, pyrotechnic in a subtle, fun way.

It's a seriously excellent book, Waterland. An examination of one man's life and ancestral history, an exploration into the purposes and philosophies inherent in the studying and uses of history itself, and a thrilling mystery. There's more than one mysterious death, here. There are ghosts, incest, elemental raging in the form of floods and fires, kidnapping, and much tragedy. Crick is a fab protagonist, and it's sometimes surprising that the warmest sections of the book are the chapters of his interactions with his classroom of children. I can't recommend this multi-layered, superbly told story highly enough. It's a great literary achievement, and keeps its mysteries to the final page. Exciting, thrilling language, and muchly thought-provoking as to the concept of "history". Buy it soon. Buy it now.

Complex and thrilling, 01 Jul 2008
When all is said and done, Waterland is a cracking yarn of murder and bonking against a fenland backdrop. But what's special about this macabre literary thriller is the way the story is told. The narrator (a history teacher, Tom Crick, who is also the key protagonist) interleaves the central narrative (set in 1943) with scenes from his troubled present (1983), evocative detours into the eventful history of his family, and philosophical musings on the uses of history. The strange chapters in this final category are reminiscent of Tolstoy's essay-chapters in War and Peace; and, like Tolstoy, Swift somehow gets away with it. In fact, the sinuous structure of the novel only adds to the suspense: just as you think you're approaching a revelation, the narrator goes off on a new tangent. It works brilliantly, because the novel's central mystery (what exactly happened in 1943?) puts a voltage across the entire book, sucking you onwards towards the end.

Writer's strengths in this case show as weaknesses, 15 Jul 2008
Like several reviewers, I too always appreciate Swift's writing; this time, it is sadly disappointing. The ability to reach inside a character and trace history back (or forwards) through time and circumstance, the ability to create layered and complex characterisation just don't cohere here.

I think the basic structure is flawed and perhaps a more conventional time line would have worked better in this instance. I sussed what the denoument would be within the first few pages (honestly!) ; as soon as the news of revelation, on your 16th birthday, tomorrow, I knew what 'it' was.

The revelation didn't actually matter but the central character never naming it in her head, upfront, began to seem more and more like a writer's trick; too clever by half for its own good. I felt SWIFT was teasing me, and this trick destroyed the narrator's credibility - his device, not hers. The story could have worked equally well if Paula had started with the revelation and her fears about making it, and then back tracked the whole development.

The relationship itself also seemed to not quite work - I don't think I'm being unduly cynical, but the perfection and sweet understanding of an almost fairy-tale relationship just seemed to lack depth. Paula and Mikey were just TOO light, there seemed very little shadow, not even the one incident where Paula makes a suspect decision, leading to a further secret she must keep. In fact, I'd even say her rationale for the act doesn't make a lot of sense, just further writer devices!

I've given it a 2 star rating because it is so far below Swift's usual standards. If this would have been a first-time author, I probably would have gone 3.

tedious beyond words, 24 Jun 2008
I wish I had read the reviews here before I bought this book. I too am a huge Swift fan and own all his books but this was unbelievably turgid. I had to drag myself from page to page and in the end gave up, totally hating the narrator and wondering what all the fuss was about.

What kind of a judgment day will tomorrow be?, 10 May 2008
The tone is unmistakeably Graham Swiftian: the monologues - the looking back from a given moment to the past - a secret to be in due course revealed - the odd tangential idea in brackets - lots of questions inside the monologue - musings about biological processes in the human and the animal world - a feeling for landscape. I have loved all those features in Swift's earlier novels, but I have to say, it took longer in this novel than in the previous ones for me to feel involved. The first half of the book, as far as plot and tension are concerned, falls, in my view, a good deal short of his previous work.

Paula has twin children, Kate and Nick, now aged sixteen. She loves them dearly, just as she does her husband Michael. She lies awake during the night, tensed up about what would happen tomorrow; for tomorrow Michael would tell the children something they did not know, something Michael and Paula had decided years ago the children would be told once they had reached the age of sixteen, something that might change their lives for ever, though Paula hopes that they will be resilient enough to cope, because, after all, in 1995 the modern young are `cooler' and more mature than their parents were at that age in the early 1960s. And they do have each other, in that special way that twins have.

In her long internal monologue that night, Paula does not get to the first revelation until page 152, and I have to say that only a relatively small part of what she says about her life and that of Michael before the children were born is relevant to that revelation. We learn quite a bit about Paula's and Michael's parents and about their careers, which is easy enough reading and has some sociological interest also; but, when reconsidered after I had read the book, it seemed like padding out, something that wasn't going anywhere in particular - a suspicion I had even when I was reading it at the time. Also, quite some time before page 152 I had some idea of what the revelation might be; and when it came, it did not seem all that shattering - although, as we get a picture of the kind of person Paula was (and the way Graham Swift empathizes with her as a woman is one of the strengths of the novel), one can understand that it had haunted her life.

But I found the ninety-odd pages of the monologue that followed the first revelation very much more interesting, more subtle, and more relevant to the situation than the part that preceded it - indeed so magnificent (and in one passage so powerful and moving) that, for all the weaker first part, I have to give the book five stars.








Tomorrow takes forever to arrive, 19 Mar 2008
In Tomorrow, Graham Swift's novel published in 2007, he employs the same technique he used in Light of Day. Light of Day involved a detective mulling, over the course of a single day, over past events and piecing the fragments together to form a cohesive and striking story.

In Tomorrow, the person doing the thinking is Paula Hook, art dealer, ex 60s' chick and mother of sixteen year-old twins. Only it's more like pontification than thinking. Paula is awake through the night and dreading the next day when her husband Mike, a biologist who gave up studying snails to work on and eventually edit a popular science magazine, is going to confess something shocking to the twins; something that will change their lives forever. But a premise like this where the narrator is building up to a shocking revelation is dependent on delaying relating the crucial event for as long as possible. This can lead to a book built on a somewhat flimsy notion where the reader is grinding their teeth with impatience for the narrator to spit it out. And it also requires the confession to be truly awful or mind boggling when it's eventually revealed.


The fact that when Paula does eventually spit it out the event in question is not hugely rare or shocking leads to a feeling of anti-climax after so much build up . There is also something dislikable about Paula. If she is indeed pondering in the way she would talk to her children, she is obviously a self-indulgent and selfish person, burdening the story with cringeably intimate details that would only embarrass a child and serve no purpose whatsoever. For instance, is it essential to this confession to keep referring to the fact that her and her husband were always at it like rabbits on Viagra? It smacks of thoughtless egotism and, far from being crucial to the story, would only add to the twins' trauma. Noone likes to think of their parents making the beast with two backs - why shove this onto the twins' a;ready full plates? There is also something of Anne Enright's narrator in her Booker-winning The Gathering about Paula - the world centres around her.


But perhaps Paula is not articulating her thoughts in the way that she hopes Mike will the next day; perhaps her thoughts are the uncensored, unashamedly egocentric version. In which case the premise of the book is shaken - we are sold the story as a mother's shivery anticipation of the true story her children will be told the next day, and the narration is consistently done in a way that addresses Paula's children.


The idea might have made a gripping short story or perhaps even novelette, but it's way too paper thin to form the backbone of a novel. Paula's irritating style of narration is exacerbated by her constant side tracking to irrelevant details; she refers to the rain pounding down many times and even jumps from a key point to refer to the weather on individual days twenty years before. Who cares? Obviously it would add to the atmosphere if this were a straight novel written contemporaneously, but when the reader is told on page one that a life-changing confession is about to be related, they don't have much patience for witterings about the weather decades before.


This is a great shame because Graham Swift is a writer of many talents. His prose is usually precise and incisive. Last Orders, Waterland and Light of Day were novels with the power to sweep the reader up and transport them, even though Waterland did take a chance with its many diversions to geographical facts about the Fens, and even though Light of Day relied on the memories of one character in a single day.

Here though, in the hands of a middle-aged non literary mother, Swift softens his style so that puns abound and the subject constantly jumps from one time and place to another. The fact that Paula weakly apologizes for her puns and darting about from inconsequential detail to blush-inducing TMI didn't stop me silently grinding my teeth and willing her to get on with it. It's not a bad book by any means - a talented writer like Swift will always have the ability to include mesmerising fragments, even when a concept is flawed. There are still chunks of this book that are gripping and lucidly written, but Paula's overbearing presence is like a shadow over the pages.
Not his best. ***00 1/2

"The future right now is simply tomorrow", 28 Oct 2007
A middle-aged woman narrates this deeply reflective novel as she lies in bed by her husband one rainy and stormy night, restlessly writing a eulogy to her two teenage children about her life and her marriage. It's almost midsummer 1995 and it's a week past Kate and Nick's sixteenth birthday. There's a secret about her family that Paula Hook is propelled to address and in the next morning her husband, Mike will also reveal to Nick and Kate his own version of the dramatic denouement that provides the climax to their lives so far.

Paula's story begins in 1966 when she is only twenty and where she meets Michael while studying at Sussex University near Brighton. On the cusp of the sexual revolution, college life has become rife with possibilities, the birth control pill has just become available to young women and Brighton is considered to be the best and perhaps the coolest place to be.

The choices that are available to a girl like Paula would have been incomprehensible to her parents and the excitement of the new, "the liberated as we sometimes called it," especially attracts Mike. Paula delicately reveals that Mike slept around, sleeping with two her friends in possibly quick succession, and then eventually hooking up with her. In fact, he got into bed with her one night in Brighton nearly thirty years ago and though the place, the room, and even the bed have changed from time to time, Mike has managed to stay with Paula ever since.

Paula was overwhelmed by the fact that Mike's father sent his son twelve bottles of champagne to celebrate their love. A sudden bounty, the champagne comes to symbolize, in a decidedly impetuous and breathless way, the couple's eventual betrothal, even though they didn't actually get married for another four years. Of course, being children of the freewheeling 60's, both Mike and Paula were obliged to scoff at the very idea of marriage.

As the narrative unfolds, Paula begins to reveal ever more about her life with Mike as she thinks back to those early days in the 1970's where Mike began his research on snails, a supposed stepping stone to his brilliant future in science, and where she began a career as a trainee art dealer at Christie's auction house. Without doubt, theirs is one of a positive and upwardly mobile life, that of a steadily married couple in their thirties living in their terraced house in the picaresque London suburb of Herne Hill

Bounded at night by her recollections in this bedroom, in the dark, with the rain smattering away outside, this world for Paula feels like some sort of temporary refuge. She tells her children of life and how short it is, that they should "seize it, treasure it and cradle it," and also of Mike's father who was forced to fly off to his highly possible death in the 2nd World War, even as Paula's own father had a very different war, cracking codes in the cozy depths of the English countryside, surrounded by lots of female clerks, one of which was Paula's mother.

When Paula and Mike discover they are cat people when they obtain a neighborhood cat called Otis. Paula, however, is quick to note that Otis came before, and was never intended to be a replacement for Kate and Nick, even when Otis ended up turning their lives upside down. Then along come the announcements and the reckonings, and the understandings about death, especially that of Grandma Pete when Paula cries her heart out at his funeral at Invercullen, and also of dear Uncle Edie who died when his was only fifty-seven and who gifted Mike a beautiful, leather-bound Victorian book on mollusks.

Thematically the novel is a plea to live one's life to the fullest, no matter how quick and rushing life it sometimes seem, even when can also seem to be slow and sweet and everlasting. Paula's message to her children is of the power of love, and perhaps even a strong measure of forgiveness. Obviously, Paula and Mike have learnt in the past few years, especially how hard it can be to tell what's true and what's false, what's real and what's pretend, and also the critical question of how they both came to make this profound decision which ended up altering their lives.

In languid and measured prose, author Graham Swift characterizes a loving and deeply intuitive marriage over the course of thirty years, the author ultimately infusing his tale with a type of worldly melancholy, but one that is also permeated with immense beauty, as well as the possibilities of great happiness. Paula's revelation comes about three quarters into the story, which causes the rest of the novel to become a bit tedious, save for Swift's leisurely and competent style and his astute observations about life which keep the action moving along at a nice enough pace. Mike Leonard October 07.


Post-Modernism (Swift), 16 Oct 2008
Ok, so I was told to read this book as part of my literature course.
An interesting choice on behalf of the tutor. Overall, the book is average with a few page turners. Other than that, the book offers nothing more than the idea of death. Swift uses a rather casual, perhaps too colloquial, approach. The book is original but Swift fails to engage the characters with the reader. However, this book serves its purpose, the relationships connecting people, and if one is taken to this subject then read it! The body is also a major theme. The book concerns the older generation which for an A-Level student is a dull subject.
The win sugests a popular read.

Good but flawed, 13 Oct 2008
Overall, Last Orders is an enjoyable novel, but it does become tedious in its final third. It is somewhat rescued from the tedium that sets in however by a suspenseful dénouement. The story is told by alternative narrators who are all friends of the recently deceased Jack Dodds; Ray, Lenny, Vince and Vic. Jack's wife Amy also features. Last Orders refers not only to last drinks in the local pub and presumably death, but also to Jack Dodds' last wish - that his ashes be scattered off the pier in Margate. The journey to Margate and the accomplishment (with great difficulty) of this task provide the forward momentum for the novel. The afternoon that the friends go to Margate begins however to disintegrate in to anger and recrimination. At the same time, we are presented with the alternating perspectives of the different characters and their inner worlds. The novel seems at first to be set up as the story of Jack Dodds told by his different friends (a la Jesus and the four evangelists) but that is not how it turns out. I did not learn as much about Jack Dodds as I would have wanted to, except from the principal narrator Ray, Jack's war time chum from North Africa and horseracing addict, whom he christened "Lucky". Apart from at times Vic, I found all of the characters to be mean spirited, negative, grubby and spiteful. These traits became oppressive and tedious about 150 pages in. The dead Jack Dodds seems to have been the only decent one among them. The narrators speak in their own local London voices and technically, this is carried off brilliantly by Swift. This does not have the power, virtuosity, or originality of Waterland - but Swift set the bar very, very high with that one. It will be interesting to see the film with Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins also. I suspect the casting is bang on; with Caine as Jack and Bob Hoskins as Ray.

Symbolism in `Last Orders', 02 Oct 2007
There must be some central significance to that image of the coach that never leaves, since it is repeated so insistently right up front. Kind of like "last call" - "hurry up, please, it's time" as T. S. Eliot would say. Like a death knell for all these old buggers? When the coach finally leaves, it's for the final destination, say?
I also wondered about the significance of the Coach too. But your idea of the Coach suggesting movement fits! It seems that the Merc would also fit this description as the Coach for the ride to the funeral?

I've been thinking about this too. Also about all the vehicles in the
book - was particularly struck by the scene of Vince riding in the back of Jack's meat wagon, smelling the dead meat and throwing up. Like being in a coffin! And there are so many other vehicles - the camper, the Mercedes, and so on. Lots of traveling - the "Coach" symbology again. Still thinking... Ray on his father's horse and cart. Even the camels in Egypt.

"....You got to keep a constant eye on the wastage, constant. What you've got to understand is the nature of the goods. Which is perishable".

I get a distinct link between dead meat (human) and dead meat (animal): butcher=doctor; posh merc-hearse/meat van - it is the journey that matters and what happens during journeys and at the halting places - hops picked/babies conceived/ashes cast.

Jack's throwing of the teddy bear into the water off Margate in 1939 was his way of burying June - he remarks to Vic he has always fancied a burial at sea. So when he asks his ashes to be scattered there - the request is made in a very formal way too - I felt it was his way of 're-uniting' with June. Yet Amy seems to be cross with him for this request - and then 'buries' June herself on the very day that Jack is 'joining' June in the sea.

Religion in the novel
Given that we've had a death, is it a little odd that there is actually no religion at all? Sure, the funeral is mentioned and they go to Canterbury Cathedral, but it seems to have significance that there is absolutely no sign of life there - its almost functioning as a memorial like the Chatham War Memorial.



One of the finest novels ever written, 29 May 2007
Last Orders is magnificently gripping in its low key description of ordinary men's lives and minds. Swift's approach to his story is no less than genius, initially slightly confusing but after only a few pages completely inebriating.
This is one of those books you wish wouldn't end, and when it inevitably does, you read the last few pages a couple of times over. Truly remarkable.

A story of great beauty, 13 Nov 2006
One of the finest modern novels in English. A delight to be savoured slowly and considerately.

Graham Swift - Waterland, 03 Sep 2008
I've read so many great books of late that I'm constantly surprised that each one betters the next! After reading Richard Yates' superb Revolutionary Road, I knew that was a hard act to follow, but Waterland not only followed it well, but bettered it. It is certainly one of the best British novels that I've ever read, a masterpiece of original narration. It is, of course, the narrative that is the absolute crowning achievement of this: Swift tell's various stories here, all mappped over one another, in varying chapters and interlocking in various ways: we have the contemporary story of Tom Crick, a history teacher being forced into early retirement, who narrates the book in a series of "lectures" to his final class. Then we have the story of Crick's childhood in the Fens, his life with his family and friends and tales of growing up, which include murder, young love and suicide. Crick also narrates to his students the wider story of the Crick family, his ancestors and how they came to their place in the Fens. He sets all of this against the wider backdrop of events in history such as the French Revolution, and the the geographical history of the Fen landscape, and how humans have shaped it over various stages in time. Put like that, it sounds dry, but it really isn't at all. Every strand of it is fascinating, and very lively to read. Swift's style, in Crick's narration, is a masterpiece of wordsmithing, playful, intelligent, witty, pyrotechnic in a subtle, fun way.

It's a seriously excellent book, Waterland. An examination of one man's life and ancestral history, an exploration into the purposes and philosophies inherent in the studying and uses of history itself, and a thrilling mystery. There's more than one mysterious death, here. There are ghosts, incest, elemental raging in the form of floods and fires, kidnapping, and much tragedy. Crick is a fab protagonist, and it's sometimes surprising that the warmest sections of the book are the chapters of his interactions with his classroom of children. I can't recommend this multi-layered, superbly told story highly enough. It's a great literary achievement, and keeps its mysteries to the final page. Exciting, thrilling language, and muchly thought-provoking as to the concept of "history". Buy it soon. Buy it now.

Complex and thrilling, 01 Jul 2008
When all is said and done, Waterland is a cracking yarn of murder and bonking against a fenland backdrop. But what's special about this macabre literary thriller is the way the story is told. The narrator (a history teacher, Tom Crick, who is also the key protagonist) interleaves the central narrative (set in 1943) with scenes from his troubled present (1983), evocative detours into the eventful history of his family, and philosophical musings on the uses of history. The strange chapters in this final category are reminiscent of Tolstoy's essay-chapters in War and Peace; and, like Tolstoy, Swift somehow gets away with it. In fact, the sinuous structure of the novel only adds to the suspense: just as you think you're approaching a revelation, the narrator goes off on a new tangent. It works brilliantly, because the novel's central mystery (what exactly happened in 1943?) puts a voltage across the entire book, sucking you onwards towards the end.

Writer's strengths in this case show as weaknesses, 15 Jul 2008
Like several reviewers, I too always appreciate Swift's writing; this time, it is sadly disappointing. The ability to reach inside a character and trace history back (or forwards) through time and circumstance, the ability to create layered and complex characterisation just don't cohere here.

I think the basic structure is flawed and perhaps a more conventional time line would have worked better in this instance. I sussed what the denoument would be within the first few pages (honestly!) ; as soon as the news of revelation, on your 16th birthday, tomorrow, I knew what 'it' was.

The revelation didn't actually matter but the central character never naming it in her head, upfront, began to seem more and more like a writer's trick; too clever by half for its own good. I felt SWIFT was teasing me, and this trick destroyed the narrator's credibility - his device, not hers. The story could have worked equally well if Paula had started with the revelation and her fears about making it, and then back tracked the whole development.

The relationship itself also seemed to not quite work - I don't think I'm being unduly cynical, but the perfection and sweet understanding of an almost fairy-tale relationship just seemed to lack depth. Paula and Mikey were just TOO light, there seemed very little shadow, not even the one incident where Paula makes a suspect decision, leading to a further secret she must keep. In fact, I'd even say her rationale for the act doesn't make a lot of sense, just further writer devices!

I've given it a 2 star rating because it is so far below Swift's usual standards. If this would have been a first-time author, I probably would have gone 3.

tedious beyond words, 24 Jun 2008
I wish I had read the reviews here before I bought this book. I too am a huge Swift fan and own all his books but this was unbelievably turgid. I had to drag myself from page to page and in the end gave up, totally hating the narrator and wondering what all the fuss was about.

What kind of a judgment day will tomorrow be?, 10 May 2008
The tone is unmistakeably Graham Swiftian: the monologues - the looking back from a given moment to the past - a secret to be in due course revealed - the odd tangential idea in brackets - lots of questions inside the monologue - musings about biological processes in the human and the animal world - a feeling for landscape. I have loved all those features in Swift's earlier novels, but I have to say, it took longer in this novel than in the previous ones for me to feel involved. The first half of the book, as far as plot and tension are concerned, falls, in my view, a good deal short of his previous work.

Paula has twin children, Kate and Nick, now aged sixteen. She loves them dearly, just as she does her husband Michael. She lies awake during the night, tensed up about what would happen tomorrow; for tomorrow Michael would tell the children something they did not know, something Michael and Paula had decided years ago the children would be told once they had reached the age of sixteen, something that might change their lives for ever, though Paula hopes that they will be resilient enough to cope, because, after all, in 1995 the modern young are `cooler' and more mature than their parents were at that age in the early 1960s. And they do have each other, in that special way that twins have.

In her long internal monologue that night, Paula does not get to the first revelation until page 152, and I have to say that only a relatively small part of what she says about her life and that of Michael before the children were born is relevant to that revelation. We learn quite a bit about Paula's and Michael's parents and about their careers, which is easy enough reading and has some sociological interest also; but, when reconsidered after I had read the book, it seemed like padding out, something that wasn't going anywhere in particular - a suspicion I had even when I was reading it at the time. Also, quite some time before page 152 I had some idea of what the revelation might be; and when it came, it did not seem all that shattering - although, as we get a picture of the kind of person Paula was (and the way Graham Swift empathizes with her as a woman is one of the strengths of the novel), one can understand that it had haunted her life.

But I found the ninety-odd pages of the monologue that followed the first revelation very much more interesting, more subtle, and more relevant to the situation than the part that preceded it - indeed so magnificent (and in one passage so powerful and moving) that, for all the weaker first part, I have to give the book five stars.








Tomorrow takes forever to arrive, 19 Mar 2008
In Tomorrow, Graham Swift's novel published in 2007, he employs the same technique he used in Light of Day. Light of Day involved a detective mulling, over the course of a single day, over past events and piecing the fragments together to form a cohesive and striking story.

In Tomorrow, the person doing the thinking is Paula Hook, art dealer, ex 60s' chick and mother of sixteen year-old twins. Only it's more like pontification than thinking. Paula is awake through the night and dreading the next day when her husband Mike, a biologist who gave up studying snails to work on and eventually edit a popular science magazine, is going to confess something shocking to the twins; something that will change their lives forever. But a premise like this where the narrator is building up to a shocking revelation is dependent on delaying relating the crucial event for as long as possible. This can lead to a book built on a somewhat flimsy notion where the reader is grinding their teeth with impatience for the narrator to spit it out. And it also requires the confession to be truly awful or mind boggling when it's eventually revealed.


The fact that when Paula does eventually spit it out the event in question is not hugely rare or shocking leads to a feeling of anti-climax after so much build up . There is also something dislikable about Paula. If she is indeed pondering in the way she would talk to her children, she is obviously a self-indulgent and selfish person, burdening the story with cringeably intimate details that would only embarrass a child and serve no purpose whatsoever. For instance, is it essential to this confession to keep referring to the fact that her and her husband were always at it like rabbits on Viagra? It smacks of thoughtless egotism and, far from being crucial to the story, would only add to the twins' trauma. Noone likes to think of their parents making the beast with two backs - why shove this onto the twins' a;ready full plates? There is also something of Anne Enright's narrator in her Booker-winning The Gathering about Paula - the world centres around her.


But perhaps Paula is not articulating her thoughts in the way that she hopes Mike will the next day; perhaps her thoughts are the uncensored, unashamedly egocentric version. In which case the premise of the book is shaken - we are sold the story as a mother's shivery anticipation of the true story her children will be told the next day, and the narration is consistently done in a way that addresses Paula's children.


The idea might have made a gripping short story or perhaps even novelette, but it's way too paper thin to form the backbone of a novel. Paula's irritating style of narration is exacerbated by her constant side tracking to irrelevant details; she refers to the rain pounding down many times and even jumps from a key point to refer to the weather on individual days twenty years before. Who cares? Obviously it would add to the atmosphere if this were a straight novel written contemporaneously, but when the reader is told on page one that a life-changing confession is about to be related, they don't have much patience for witterings about the weather decades before.


This is a great shame because Graham Swift is a writer of many talents. His prose is usually precise and incisive. Last Orders, Waterland and Light of Day were novels with the power to sweep the reader up and transport them, even though Waterland did take a chance with its many diversions to geographical facts about the Fens, and even though Light of Day relied on the memories of one character in a single day.

Here though, in the hands of a middle-aged non literary mother, Swift softens his style so that puns abound and the subject constantly jumps from one time and place to another. The fact that Paula weakly apologizes for her puns and darting about from inconsequential detail to blush-inducing TMI didn't stop me silently grinding my teeth and willing her to get on with it. It's not a bad book by any means - a talented writer like Swift will always have the ability to include mesmerising fragments, even when a concept is flawed. There are still chunks of this book that are gripping and lucidly written, but Paula's overbearing presence is like a shadow over the pages.
Not his best. ***00 1/2

"The future right now is simply tomorrow", 28 Oct 2007
A middle-aged woman narrates this deeply reflective novel as she lies in bed by her husband one rainy and stormy night, restlessly writing a eulogy to her two teenage children about her life and her marriage. It's almost midsummer 1995 and it's a week past Kate and Nick's sixteenth birthday. There's a secret about her family that Paula Hook is propelled to address and in the next morning her husband, Mike will also reveal to Nick and Kate his own version of the dramatic denouement that provides the climax to their lives so far.

Paula's story begins in 1966 when she is only twenty and where she meets Michael while studying at Sussex University near Brighton. On the cusp of the sexual revolution, college life has become rife with possibilities, the birth control pill has just become available to young women and Brighton is considered to be the best and perhaps the coolest place to be.

The choices that are available to a girl like Paula would have been incomprehensible to her parents and the excitement of the new, "the liberated as we sometimes called it," especially attracts Mike. Paula delicately reveals that Mike slept around, sleeping with two her friends in possibly quick succession, and then eventually hooking up with her. In fact, he got into bed with her one night in Brighton nearly thirty years ago and though the place, the room, and even the bed have changed from time to time, Mike has managed to stay with Paula ever since.

Paula was overwhelmed by the fact that Mike's father sent his son twelve bottles of champagne to celebrate their love. A sudden bounty, the champagne comes to symbolize, in a decidedly impetuous and breathless way, the couple's eventual betrothal, even though they didn't actually get married for another four years. Of course, being children of the freewheeling 60's, both Mike and Paula were obliged to scoff at the very idea of marriage.

As the narrative unfolds, Paula begins to reveal ever more about her life with Mike as she thinks back to those early days in the 1970's where Mike began his research on snails, a supposed stepping stone to his brilliant future in science, and where she began a career as a trainee art dealer at Christie's auction house. Without doubt, theirs is one of a positive and upwardly mobile life, that of a steadily married couple in their thirties living in their terraced house in the picaresque London suburb of Herne Hill

Bounded at night by her recollections in this bedroom, in the dark, with the rain smattering away outside, this world for Paula feels like some sort of temporary refuge. She tells her children of life and how short it is, that they should "seize it, treasure it and cradle it," and also of Mike's father who was forced to fly off to his highly possible death in the 2nd World War, even as Paula's own father had a very different war, cracking codes in the cozy depths of the English countryside, surrounded by lots of female clerks, one of which was Paula's mother.

When Paula and Mike discover they are cat people when they obtain a neighborhood cat called Otis. Paula, however, is quick to note that Otis came before, and was never intended to be a replacement for Kate and Nick, even when Otis ended up turning their lives upside down. Then along come the announcements and the reckonings, and the understandings about death, especially that of Grandma Pete when Paula cries her heart out at his funeral at Invercullen, and also of dear Uncle Edie who died when his was only fifty-seven and who gifted Mike a beautiful, leather-bound Victorian book on mollusks.

Thematically the novel is a plea to live one's life to the fullest, no matter how quick and rushing life it sometimes seem, even when can also seem to be slow and sweet and everlasting. Paula's message to her children is of the power of love, and perhaps even a strong measure of forgiveness. Obviously, Paula and Mike have learnt in the past few years, especially how hard it can be to tell what's true and what's false, what's real and what's pretend, and also the critical question of how they both came to make this profound decision which ended up altering their lives.

In languid and measured prose, author Graham Swift characterizes a loving and deeply intuitive marriage over the course of thirty years, the author ultimately infusing his tale with a type of worldly melancholy, but one that is also permeated with immense beauty, as well as the possibilities of great happiness. Paula's revelation comes about three quarters into the story, which causes the rest of the novel to become a bit tedious, save for Swift's leisurely and competent style and his astute observations about life which keep the action moving along at a nice enough pace. Mike Leonard October 07.


Post-Modernism (Swift), 16 Oct 2008
Ok, so I was told to read this book as part of my literature course.
An interesting choice on behalf of the tutor. Overall, the book is average with a few page turners. Other than that, the book offers nothing more than the idea of death. Swift uses a rather casual, perhaps too colloquial, approach. The book is original but Swift fails to engage the characters with the reader. However, this book serves its purpose, the relationships connecting people, and if one is taken to this subject then read it! The body is also a major theme. The book concerns the older generation which for an A-Level student is a dull subject.
The win sugests a popular read.

Good but flawed, 13 Oct 2008
Overall, Last Orders is an enjoyable novel, but it does become tedious in its final third. It is somewhat rescued from the tedium that sets in however by a suspenseful dénouement. The story is told by alternative narrators who are all friends of the recently deceased Jack Dodds; Ray, Lenny, Vince and Vic. Jack's wife Amy also features. Last Orders refers not only to last drinks in the local pub and presumably death, but also to Jack Dodds' last wish - that his ashes be scattered off the pier in Margate. The journey to Margate and the accomplishment (with great difficulty) of this task provide the forward momentum for the novel. The afternoon that the friends go to Margate begins however to disintegrate in to anger and recrimination. At the same time, we are presented with the alternating perspectives of the different characters and their inner worlds. The novel seems at first to be set up as the story of Jack Dodds told by his different friends (a la Jesus and the four evangelists) but that is not how it turns out. I did not learn as much about Jack Dodds as I would have wanted to, except from the principal narrator Ray, Jack's war time chum from North Africa and horseracing addict, whom he christened "Lucky". Apart from at times Vic, I found all of the characters to be mean spirited, negative, grubby and spiteful. These traits became oppressive and tedious about 150 pages in. The dead Jack Dodds seems to have been the only decent one among them. The narrators speak in their own local London voices and technically, this is carried off brilliantly by Swift. This does not have the power, virtuosity, or originality of Waterland - but Swift set the bar very, very high with that one. It will be interesting to see the film with Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins also. I suspect the casting is bang on; with Caine as Jack and Bob Hoskins as Ray.

Symbolism in `Last Orders', 02 Oct 2007
There must be some central significance to that image of the coach that never leaves, since it is repeated so insistently right up front. Kind of like "last call" - "hurry up, please, it's time" as T. S. Eliot would say. Like a death knell for all these old buggers? When the coach finally leaves, it's for the final destination, say?
I also wondered about the significance of the Coach too. But your idea of the Coach suggesting movement fits! It seems that the Merc would also fit this description as the Coach for the ride to the funeral?

I've been thinking about this too. Also about all the vehicles in the
book - was particularly struck by the scene of Vince riding in the back of Jack's meat wagon, smelling the dead meat and throwing up. Like being in a coffin! And there are so many other vehicles - the camper, the Mercedes, and so on. Lots of traveling - the "Coach" symbology again. Still thinking... Ray on his father's horse and cart. Even the camels in Egypt.

"....You got to keep a constant eye on the wastage, constant. What you've got to understand is the nature of the goods. Which is perishable".

I get a distinct link between dead meat (human) and dead meat (animal): butcher=doctor; posh merc-hearse/meat van - it is the journey that matters and what happens during journeys and at the halting places - hops picked/babies conceived/ashes cast.

Jack's throwing of the teddy bear into the water off Margate in 1939 was his way of burying June - he remarks to Vic he has always fancied a burial at sea. So when he asks his ashes to be scattered there - the request is made in a very formal way too - I felt it was his way of 're-uniting' with June. Yet Amy seems to be cross with him for this request - and then 'buries' June herself on the very day that Jack is 'joining' June in the sea.

Religion in the novel
Given that we've had a death, is it a little odd that there is actually no religion at all? Sure, the funeral is mentioned and they go to Canterbury Cathedral, but it seems to have significance that there is absolutely no sign of life there - its almost functioning as a memorial like the Chatham War Memorial.



One of the finest novels ever written, 29 May 2007
Last Orders is magnificently gripping in its low key description of ordinary men's lives and minds. Swift's approach to his story is no less than genius, initially slightly confusing but after only a few pages completely inebriating.
This is one of those books you wish wouldn't end, and when it inevitably does, you read the last few pages a couple of times over. Truly remarkable.

A story of great beauty, 13 Nov 2006
One of the finest modern novels in English. A delight to be savoured slowly and considerately.

the light of day, 18 Jul 2007
I was drawn to Graham Swift's The Light of Day on the shelf because its cover was emblazoned with 'Winner of the Booker Prize'. I knew that his novel Last Orders had won the Booker in 1996 - and won it amid some controversy, because of noted similarities between it and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. But I hadn't realised he had won The Booker for The Light of Day as well.

He hadn't - the ploy was a faintly disingenuous one by Penguin relating to Swift's previous Booker win - they could have added 'for Last Orders' to clarify. Nevertheless, the opening pages of The Light of Day are branded with eulogies from various publications. I had enjoyed both Last Orders and Waterland, and I knew that Swift had also won several other awards (The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Shuttlecock in 1981 and again for Waterland in '83, the latter also having won a Guardian Fiction Prize.) So the indicators were that Light of Day, Swift's six novel of seven, published in 2003, would be worth perusal.
It is indeed a powerful book. It has several similarities with Waterland, most notably the meandering style which flits from past to present, gradually sketching historical events in the lives of different characters which finally coalesce into a whole picture. Like Waterland, many of the characters are damaged - hurt from life's blows, irreperably scarred, yet still reticently, shyly open to new experiences. As with Swift's first novel, the 1980 The Sweet Shop Owner, and other contemporary novels such as Ian McEwan's Saturday, present tense events in the book span a single day. Unlike McEwan's novel, though, the reader's comprehension of what has happened in the past is not complete until near the end of the story, when past events have been replayed at an almost agonisingly slow but always compelling pace.

It is 1997. The narrator is George Webb, ex policeman who left the force in a cloud of disgrace eight years previously. With the loss of his profession, his life fell apart - his school teacher wife walked out and he almost sank. But gradually he lifted himself through the murk and, with the love of his previously distant daughter Helen behind him, reinvented himself as a private investigator.
This is where the story starts - George in his office, about to set off on a day that is not routine, an anniversary of an event in which he was involved and embroiled. A day which sees him run the whole gamut of emotions from tenderness and love to hatred, black, seething jealousy, despair and hope.
The strength of this book lies in George's narration. His voice is genuine and credible, both in its ability to relate a gripping story in the voice of an ordinary, ineloquent man, and in provoking sympathy and feeling for a man who is in many ways unremarkable. Swift shows through his characters the complexities of life: how humans often love those who don't objectively deserve their dedication; how ordinary people can transcend tragedy and show unerring loyalty; how rebuffed romantic love can sour so quickly into violent hatred followed by an eternity of regret. It is a tender, engrossing story in which the simple language shrouds greater depths of humanity.
__________________

Disappointing, 23 Oct 2006
I was so disappointed with this book. The cover talks of previously having won the Booker Prize and has rave reviews but I found the story quite confusing at the beginning and once I had sorted in my mind who and what was being talked about, I realised that by then that was the whole story -there was nothing more to it. There was a lot of un-necessary description and self examination but quite frankly nothing very gripping. I'm just pleased that this book was passed to me and I didn't waste full price on it.

"To love is to be ready to lose, it's not to have, to keep.", 04 Feb 2005
Initially resembling an old-fashioned, hard-boiled detective story, this novel by Graham Swift becomes, as the perspective widens, an investigation of love, man's need for love, and the sacrifices we are all willing to make for love. Private detective George Webb allows the reader to "tag along" during one day of his life in 1997, talking to his readers about aspects of his life as they impinge randomly on his consciousness. Description is not a big part of George's life, and it takes the reader some time to understand all his references in this lengthy interior monologue. We don't know, at first, why Nov. 20 is a significant date to him or where he goes every other Thursday, nor do we know about his personal relationships with the women introduced at the beginning, or the reason he's buying flowers, or why he's had a woman's handbag in his possession for two years.

As George's recollections, memories, and observations expand, however, we gradually come to know him and his past, including his relationship with his father, his own broken marriage and the circumstances surrounding it, his alienated daughter, his womanizing, the scandal which has resulted in his leaving the police force, and his decision to specialize in "matrimonial work." We learn, too, that George's client, Mrs. Nash, is now in jail, the reasons for this unfolding even more gradually, as we come to know her, her husband Bob, and the privileged life they've led. Always, however, our opinions of these characters and their relationships are colored by George's point of view, and we, as objective observers, learn as much about them from what George does not say as we do by what he does say.

All of George's memories are concerned with the vulnerability of people who are in love, as Swift raises questions about whether we choose the people we love, or whether we are chosen by them. Does love just happen? What makes it last? What happens to lovers who are "unchosen"? And can we love too much? Although a mystery story is not usually the framework for such a serious, philosophical analysis of love in all its permutations, Swift manages to make this work through his beautifully wrought character study of George, buffeted every which way by the loves in his life. In the lean, unemphatic prose style he first employed in Last Orders, Graham Swift presents a sensitive investigation of love with all its mysteries and ineffable sadness. Mary Whipple

Very beautifully written: perhaps too beautifully written?, 13 Jan 2005
None of Graham Swift's books are negligible, and his latest is as masterly and as meticulously constructed as ever. "The Light of Day" concerns the unlikely love which has developed between murderess Sarah Nash (serving a life sentence for dispatching her unfaithful husband with a kitchen knife) and her private detective. The Private Eye in question, George Webb, is an archetypal Swiftian creation - a middle-aged man with a failed marriage and a failed police career behind him, his dogged, world-weary idealism is reminiscent of the likes of Tom Crick in "Waterland". As he slowly tells us how he comes to be carrying a torch for Sarah while she languishes in prison, George becomes an unlikely poet and a character of real stature.

The book turns the conventions of the Crime genre on their head: the motive for Bob Nash's murder, and the circumstances of the crime, are essentially clear from very early in the novel. The real mystery is the developing relationship between Sarah and George, and just how George has arrived at the unlikely position in which he finds himself. As he muses over and tries to make sense of his past life, George's motivations slowly become clear to the reader.

Swift gives George a compelling voice: the recurrence and repetition of telling little phrases - "What else is civilisation for?"; "If [whatever] isn't an unfortunate word"; "The points on our map"; "Matrimonial Work" - build a rhythm into his narrative that has a big cumulative effect.

So, why only four stars? Well, while this is undoubtedly a beautifully written and often a moving book, I left it feeling just a little short-changed. Maybe it's just too beautifully written for its violent subject matter: I missed the rawness and suppressed rage found in some of his earlier novels, particularly "Waterland" which remains (for me anyway) the best thing he has done. George is perhaps just too nice a guy to make a really involving central character. Also, "The Light of Day" is inevitably a rather static book, with the narrative ruminating over a single violent act which is already well in the past at the novel's opening. In many ways, the novel makes a virtue of this stasis - it is very much about patience; keeping faith; standing watch... For me, though, this isn't quite Swift at his faultless best. All the same, it undoubtedly remains a fine novel and an undeniably good read.

Fate Rules, OK?, 18 Jun 2004
For some reason, a number of reviewers use the term "hard boiled" in their description of this deeply psychological novel. Presumably this is because the protagonist is an ex-policeman who was kicked off the force for "corruption" and is now doing seedy "matrimonial" detective work. And other familiar "hard boiled" types on hand as well: the efficient secretary who pines for the PI, the femme fatale client, a cheating husband, and the PI's long-gone ex-wife. While these are certainly well-established hard-boiled types, Swift is much more interested in noir than hard-boiled. Now "noir" is itself a very tricksy word in film and litcrit circles, with many and varied meanings. However, noir's main recurring theme is that of fate, and fate is what Swift is really interested in investigating in this novel. Another of noir's key themes is the individual's inability to escape the past, and this too, plays a major role.

The story takes place over the course of a day in the head of middle-aged George Webb, the aforementioned ex-cop turned private investigator. His interior monologue takes quite a while to get used to, lurching around in fits and starts, back and forth in time, with little glimpses here and there. This is a canny writing job of capturing the fractured nature of thought, which is rarely so kind as to adhere to complete direct syntaxóbut it also makes for jarring reading. The style only really works because it's a special day for Webb: the anniversary of the day a client killed her husband. Not just any client, but the client he's become completely obsessed with and visits every two weeks in jail.

Over the course of this emotionally distressing day, Webb's thoughts gradually reveal not only the story of his client's crime, but the story of his dismissal from the police, as well as his childhood, and his relationship with his daughter. Swift is careful to release only micrograms of information at a time, so that the complete portrait of Webb's life accumulates in fragments, like a pointillist painting gradually coming alive as the dots mount up. But for all this coyness, there's no real suspense in the narrative, events proceed along an inevitable track dictated by fate. It's heavily suggested early on that Webb was unjustly dismissed from the police, and it turns out he was. Webb's career in "matrimonial " detective work turns out to be linked to his childhood. Webb's obsession with his murderess client is based on... well... nothing really, it just inexplicably exists (as in a film noir). Ditto with any explanation for the client's crimeóit's just what fate had in store, and that's all there is to it. Ultimately, all of this is rather unsatisfying, if stylistically well-written. I've long wanted to read one of Swift's books, but this doesn't seem to be a good one to start with.

Graham Swift - Waterland, 03 Sep 2008
I've read so many great books of late that I'm constantly surprised that each one betters the next! After reading Richard Yates' superb Revolutionary Road, I knew that was a hard act to follow, but Waterland not only followed it well, but bettered it. It is certainly one of the best British novels that I've ever read, a masterpiece of original narration. It is, of course, the narrative that is the absolute crowning achievement of this: Swift tell's various stories here, all mappped over one another, in varying chapters and interlocking in various ways: we have the contemporary story of Tom Crick, a history teacher being forced into early retirement, who narrates the book in a series of "lectures" to his final class. Then we have the story of Crick's childhood in the Fens, his life with his family and friends and tales of growing up, which include murder, young love and suicide. Crick also narrates to his students the wider story of the Crick family, his ancestors and how they came to their place in the Fens. He sets all of this against the wider backdrop of events in history such as the French Revolution, and the the geographical history of the Fen landscape, and how humans have shaped it over various stages in time. Put like that, it sounds dry, but it really isn't at all. Every strand of it is fascinating, and very lively to read. Swift's style, in Crick's narration, is a masterpiece of wordsmithing, playful, intelligent, witty, pyrotechnic in a subtle, fun way.

It's a seriously excellent book, Waterland. An examination of one man's life and ancestral history, an exploration into the purposes and philosophies inherent in the studying and uses of history itself, and a thrilling mystery. There's more than one mysterious death, here. There are ghosts, incest, elemental raging in the form of floods and fires, kidnapping, and much tragedy. Crick is a fab protagonist, and it's sometimes surprising that the warmest sections of the book are the chapters of his interactions with his classroom of children. I can't recommend this multi-layered, superbly told story highly enough. It's a great literary achievement, and keeps its mysteries to the final page. Exciting, thrilling language, and muchly thought-provoking as to the concept of "history". Buy it soon. Buy it now.

Complex and thrilling, 01 Jul 2008
When all is said and done, Waterland is a cracking yarn of murder and bonking against a fenland backdrop. But what's special about this macabre literary thriller is the way the story is told. The narrator (a history teacher, Tom Crick, who is also the key protagonist) interleaves the central narrative (set in 1943) with scenes from his troubled present (1983), evocative detours into the eventful history of his family, and philosophical musings on the uses of history. The strange chapters in this final category are reminiscent of Tolstoy's essay-chapters in War and Peace; and, like Tolstoy, Swift somehow gets away with it. In fact, the sinuous structure of the novel only adds to the suspense: just as you think you're approaching a revelation, the narrator goes off on a new tangent. It works brilliantly, because the novel's central mystery (what exactly happened in 1943?) puts a voltage across the entire book, sucking you onwards towards the end.

Writer's strengths in this case show as weaknesses, 15 Jul 2008
Like several reviewers, I too always appreciate Swift's writing; this time, it is sadly disappointing. The ability to reach inside a character and trace history back (or forwards) through time and circumstance, the ability to create layered and complex characterisation just don't cohere here.

I think the basic structure is flawed and perhaps a more conventional time line would have worked better in this instance. I sussed what the denoument would be within the first few pages (honestly!) ; as soon as the news of revelation, on your 16th birthday, tomorrow, I knew what 'it' was.

The revelation didn't actually matter but the central character never naming it in her head, upfront, began to seem more and more like a writer's trick; too clever by half for its own good. I felt SWIFT was teasing me, and this trick destroyed the narrator's credibility - his device, not hers. The story could have worked equally well if Paula had started with the revelation and her fears about making it, and then back tracked the whole development.

The relationship itself also seemed to not quite work - I don't think I'm being unduly cynical, but the perfection and sweet understanding of an almost fairy-tale relationship just seemed to lack depth. Paula and Mikey were just TOO light, there seemed very little shadow, not even the one incident where Paula makes a suspect decision, leading to a further secret she must keep. In fact, I'd even say her rationale for the act doesn't make a lot of sense, just further writer devices!

I've given it a 2 star rating because it is so far below Swift's usual standards. If this would have been a first-time author, I probably would have gone 3.

tedious beyond words, 24 Jun 2008
I wish I had read the reviews here before I bought this book. I too am a huge Swift fan and own all his books but this was unbelievably turgid. I had to drag myself from page to page and in the end gave up, totally hating the narrator and wondering what all the fuss was about.

What kind of a judgment day will tomorrow be?, 10 May 2008
The tone is unmistakeably Graham Swiftian: the monologues - the looking back from a given moment to the past - a secret to be in due course revealed - the odd tangential idea in brackets - lots of questions inside the monologue - musings about biological processes in the human and the animal world - a feeling for landscape. I have loved all those features in Swift's earlier novels, but I have to say, it took longer in this novel than in the previous ones for me to feel involved. The first half of the book, as far as plot and tension are concerned, falls, in my view, a good deal short of his previous work.

Paula has twin children, Kate and Nick, now aged sixteen. She loves them dearly, just as she does her husband Michael. She lies awake during the night, tensed up about what would happen tomorrow; for tomorrow Michael would tell the children something they did not know, something Michael and Paula had decided years ago the children would be told once they had reached the age of sixteen, something that might change their lives for ever, though Paula hopes that they will be resilient enough to cope, because, after all, in 1995 the modern young are `cooler' and more mature than their parents were at that age in the early 1960s. And they do have each other, in that special way that twins have.

In her long internal monologue that night, Paula does not get to the first revelation until page 152, and I have to say that only a relatively small part of what she says about her life and that of Michael before the children were born is relevant to that revelation. We learn quite a bit about Paula's and Michael's parents and about their careers, which is easy enough reading and has some sociological interest also; but, when reconsidered after I had read the book, it seemed like padding out, something that wasn't going anywhere in particular - a suspicion I had even when I was reading it at the time. Also, quite some time before page 152 I had some idea of what the revelation might be; and when it came, it did not seem all that shattering - although, as we get a picture of the kind of person Paula was (and the way Graham Swift empathizes with her as a woman is one of the strengths of the novel), one can understand that it had haunted her life.

But I found the ninety-odd pages of the monologue that followed the first revelation very much more interesting, more subtle, and more relevant to the situation than the part that preceded it - indeed so magnificent (and in one passage so powerful and moving) that, for all the weaker first part, I have to give the book five stars.








Tomorrow takes forever to arrive, 19 Mar 2008
In Tomorrow, Graham Swift's novel published in 2007, he employs the same technique he used in Light of Day. Light of Day involved a detective mulling, over the course of a single day, over past events and piecing the fragments together to form a cohesive and striking story.

In Tomorrow, the person doing the thinking is Paula Hook, art dealer, ex 60s' chick and mother of sixteen year-old twins. Only it's more like pontification than thinking. Paula is awake through the night and dreading the next day when her husband Mike, a biologist who gave up studying snails to work on and eventually edit a popular science magazine, is going to confess something shocking to the twins; something that will change their lives forever. But a premise like this where the narrator is building up to a shocking revelation is dependent on delaying relating the crucial event for as long as possible. This can lead to a book built on a somewhat flimsy notion where the reader is grinding their teeth with impatience for the narrator to spit it out. And it also requires the confession to be truly awful or mind boggling when it's eventually revealed.


The fact that when Paula does eventually spit it out the event in question is not hugely rare or shocking leads to a feeling of anti-climax after so much build up . There is also something dislikable about Paula. If she is indeed pondering in the way she would talk to her children, she is obviously a self-indulgent and selfish person, burdening the story with cringeably intimate details that would only embarrass a child and serve no purpose whatsoever. For instance, is it essential to this confession to keep referring to the fact that her and her husband were always at it like rabbits on Viagra? It smacks of thoughtless egotism and, far from being crucial to the story, would only add to the twins' trauma. Noone likes to think of their parents making the beast with two backs - why shove this onto the twins' a;ready full plates? There is also something of Anne Enright's narrator in her Booker-winning The Gathering about Paula - the world centres around her.


But perhaps Paula is not articulating her thoughts in the way that she hopes Mike will the next day; perhaps her thoughts are the uncensored, unashamedly egocentric version. In which case the premise of the book is shaken - we are sold the story as a mother's shivery anticipation of the true story her children will be told the next day, and the narration is consistently done in a way that addresses Paula's children.


The idea might have made a gripping short story or perhaps even novelette, but it's way too paper thin to form the backbone of a novel. Paula's irritating style of narration is exacerbated by her constant side tracking to irrelevant details; she refers to the rain pounding down many times and even jumps from a key point to refer to the weather on individual days twenty years before. Who cares? Obviously it would add to the atmosphere if this were a straight novel written contemporaneously, but when the reader is told on page one that a life-changing confession is about to be related, they don't have much patience for witterings about the weather decades before.


This is a great shame because Graham Swift is a writer of many talents. His prose is usually precise and incisive. Last Orders, Waterland and Light of Day were novels with the power to sweep the reader up and transport them, even though Waterland did take a chance with its many diversions to geographical facts about the Fens, and even though Light of Day relied on the memories of one character in a single day.

Here though, in the hands of a middle-aged non literary mother, Swift softens his style so that puns abound and the subject constantly jumps from one time and place to another. The fact that Paula weakly apologizes for her puns and darting about from inconsequential detail to blush-inducing TMI didn't stop me silently grinding my teeth and willing her to get on with it. It's not a bad book by any means - a talented writer like Swift will always have the ability to include mesmerising fragments, even when a concept is flawed. There are still chunks of this book that are gripping and lucidly written, but Paula's overbearing presence is like a shadow over the pages.
Not his best. ***00 1/2

"The future right now is simply tomorrow", 28 Oct 2007
A middle-aged woman narrates this deeply reflective novel as she lies in bed by her husband one rainy and stormy night, restlessly writing a eulogy to her two teenage children about her life and her marriage. It's almost midsummer 1995 and it's a week past Kate and Nick's sixteenth birthday. There's a secret about her family that Paula Hook is propelled to address and in the next morning her husband, Mike will also reveal to Nick and Kate his own version of the dramatic denouement that provides the climax to their lives so far.

Paula's story begins in 1966 when she is only twenty and where she meets Michael while studying at Sussex University near Brighton. On the cusp of the sexual revolution, college life has become rife with possibilities, the birth control pill has just become available to young women and Brighton is considered to be the best and perhaps the coolest place to be.

The choices that are available to a girl like Paula would have been incomprehensible to her parents and the excitement of the new, "the liberated as we sometimes called it," especially attracts Mike. Paula delicately reveals that Mike slept around, sleeping with two her friends in possibly quick succession, and then eventually hooking up with her. In fact, he got into bed with her one night in Brighton nearly thirty years ago and though the place, the room, and even the bed have changed from time to time, Mike has managed to stay with Paula ever since.

Paula was overwhelmed by the fact that Mike's father sent his son twelve bottles of champagne to celebrate their love. A sudden bounty, the champagne comes to symbolize, in a decidedly impetuous and breathless way, the couple's eventual betrothal, even though they didn't actually get married for another four years. Of course, being children of the freewheeling 60's, both Mike and Paula were obliged to scoff at the very idea of marriage.

As the narrative unfolds, Paula begins to reveal ever more about her life with Mike as she thinks back to those early days in the 1970's where Mike began his research on snails, a supposed stepping stone to his brilliant future in science, and where she began a career as a trainee art dealer at Christie's auction house. Without doubt, theirs is one of a positive and upwardly mobile life, that of a steadily married couple in their thirties living in their terraced house in the picaresque London suburb of Herne Hill

Bounded at night by her recollections in this bedroom, in the dark, with the rain smattering away outside, this world for Paula feels like some sort of temporary refuge. She tells her children of life and how short it is, that they should "seize it, treasure it and cradle it," and also of Mike's father who was forced to fly off to his highly possible death in the 2nd World War, even as Paula's own father had a very different war, cracking codes in the cozy depths of the English countryside, surrounded by lots of female clerks, one of which was Paula's mother.

When Paula and Mike discover they are cat people when they obtain a neighborhood cat called Otis. Paula, however, is quick to note that Otis came before, and was never intended to be a replacement for Kate and Nick, even when Otis ended up turning their lives upside down. Then along come the announcements and the reckonings, and the understandings about death, especially that of Grandma Pete when Paula cries her heart out at his funeral at Invercullen, and also of dear Uncle Edie who died when his was only fifty-seven and who gifted Mike a beautiful, leather-bound Victorian book on mollusks.

Thematically the novel is a plea to live one's life to the fullest, no matter how quick and rushing life it sometimes seem, even when can also seem to be slow and sweet and everlasting. Paula's message to her children is of the power of love, and perhaps even a strong measure of forgiveness. Obviously, Paula and Mike have learnt in the past few years, especially how hard it can be to tell what's true and what's false, what's real and what's pretend, and also the critical question of how they both came to make this profound decision which ended up altering their lives.

In languid and measured prose, author Graham Swift characterizes a loving and deeply intuitive marriage over the course of thirty years, the author ultimately infusing his tale with a type of worldly melancholy, but one that is also permeated with immense beauty, as well as the possibilities of great happiness. Paula's revelation comes about three quarters into the story, which causes the rest of the novel to become a bit tedious, save for Swift's leisurely and competent style and his astute observations about life which keep the action moving along at a nice enough pace. Mike Leonard October 07.


Post-Modernism (Swift), 16 Oct 2008
Ok, so I was told to read this book as part of my literature course.
An interesting choice on behalf of the tutor. Overall, the book is average with a few page turners. Other than that, the book offers nothing more than the idea of death. Swift uses a rather casual, perhaps too colloquial, approach. The book is original but Swift fails to engage the characters with the reader. However, this book serves its purpose, the relationships connecting people, and if one is taken to this subject then read it! The body is also a major theme. The book concerns the older generation which for an A-Level student is a dull subject.
The win sugests a popular read.

Good but flawed, 13 Oct 2008
Overall, Last Orders is an enjoyable novel, but it does become tedious in its final third. It is somewhat rescued from the tedium that sets in however by a suspenseful dénouement. The story is told by alternative narrators who are all friends of the recently deceased Jack Dodds; Ray, Lenny, Vince and Vic. Jack's wife Amy also features. Last Orders refers not only to last drinks in the local pub and presumably death, but also to Jack Dodds' last wish - that his ashes be scattered off the pier in Margate. The journey to Margate and the accomplishment (with great difficulty) of this task provide the forward momentum for the novel. The afternoon that the friends go to Margate begins however to disintegrate in to anger and recrimination. At the same time, we are presented with the alternating perspectives of the different characters and their inner worlds. The novel seems at first to be set up as the story of Jack Dodds told by his different friends (a la Jesus and the four evangelists) but that is not how it turns out. I did not learn as much about Jack Dodds as I would have wanted to, except from the principal narrator Ray, Jack's war time chum from North Africa and horseracing addict, whom he christened "Lucky". Apart from at times Vic, I found all of the characters to be mean spirited, negative, grubby and spiteful. These traits became oppressive and tedious about 150 pages in. The dead Jack Dodds seems to have been the only decent one among them. The narrators speak in their own local London voices and technically, this is carried off brilliantly by Swift. This does not have the power, virtuosity, or originality of Waterland - but Swift set the bar very, very high with that one. It will be interesting to see the film with Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins also. I suspect the casting is bang on; with Caine as Jack and Bob Hoskins as Ray.

Symbolism in `Last Orders', 02 Oct 2007
There must be some central significance to that image of the coach that never leaves, since it is repeated so insistently right up front. Kind of like "last call" - "hurry up, please, it's time" as T. S. Eliot would say. Like a death knell for all these old buggers? When the coach finally leaves, it's for the final destination, say?
I also wondered about the significance of the Coach too. But your idea of the Coach suggesting movement fits! It seems that the Merc would also fit this description as the Coach for the ride to the funeral?

I've been thinking about this too. Also about all the vehicles in the
book - was particularly struck by the scene of Vince riding in the back of Jack's meat wagon, smelling the dead meat and throwing up. Like being in a coffin! And there are so many other vehicles - the camper, the Mercedes, and so on. Lots of traveling - the "Coach" symbology again. Still thinking... Ray on his father's horse and cart. Even the camels in Egypt.

"....You got to keep a constant eye on the wastage, constant. What you've got to understand is the nature of the goods. Which is perishable".

I get a distinct link between dead meat (human) and dead meat (animal): butcher=doctor; posh merc-hearse/meat van - it is the journey that matters and what happens during journeys and at the halting places - hops picked/babies conceived/ashes cast.

Jack's throwing of the teddy bear into the water off Margate in 1939 was his way of burying June - he remarks to Vic he has always fancied a burial at sea. So when he asks his ashes to be scattered there - the request is made in a very formal way too - I felt it was his way of 're-uniting' with June. Yet Amy seems to be cross with him for this request - and then 'buries' June herself on the very day that Jack is 'joining' June in the sea.

Religion in the novel
Given that we've had a death, is it a little odd that there is actually no religion at all? Sure, the funeral is mentioned and they go to Canterbury Cathedral, but it seems to have significance that there is absolutely no sign of life there - its almost functioning as a memorial like the Chatham War Memorial.



One of the finest novels ever written, 29 May 2007
Last Orders is magnificently gripping in its low key description of ordinary men's lives and minds. Swift's approach to his story is no less than genius, initially slightly confusing but after only a few pages completely inebriating.
This is one of those books you wish wouldn't end, and when it inevitably does, you read the last few pages a couple of times over. Truly remarkable.

A story of great beauty, 13 Nov 2006
One of the finest modern novels in English. A delight to be savoured slowly and considerately.

the light of day, 18 Jul 2007
I was drawn to Graham Swift's The Light of Day on the shelf because its cover was emblazoned with 'Winner of the Booker Prize'. I knew that his novel Last Orders had won the Booker in 1996 - and won it amid some controversy, because of noted similarities between it and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. But I hadn't realised he had won The Booker for The Light of Day as well.

He hadn't - the ploy was a faintly disingenuous one by Penguin relating to Swift's previous Booker win - they could have added 'for Last Orders' to clarify. Nevertheless, the opening pages of The Light of Day are branded with eulogies from various publications. I had enjoyed both Last Orders and Waterland, and I knew that Swift had also won several other awards (The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Shuttlecock in 1981 and again for Waterland in '83, the latter also having won a Guardian Fiction Prize.) So the indicators were that Light of Day, Swift's six novel of seven, published in 2003, would be worth perusal.
It is indeed a powerful book. It has several similarities with Waterland, most notably the meandering style which flits from past to present, gradually sketching historical events in the lives of different characters which finally coalesce into a whole picture. Like Waterland, many of the characters are damaged - hurt from life's blows, irreperably scarred, yet still reticently, shyly open to new experiences. As with Swift's first novel, the 1980 The Sweet Shop Owner, and other contemporary novels such as Ian McEwan's Saturday, present tense events in the book span a single day. Unlike McEwan's novel, though, the reader's comprehension of what has happened in the past is not complete until near the end of the story, when past events have been replayed at an almost agonisingly slow but always compelling pace.

It is 1997. The narrator is George Webb, ex policeman who left the force in a cloud of disgrace eight years previously. With the loss of his profession, his life fell apart - his school teacher wife walked out and he almost sank. But gradually he lifted himself through the murk and, with the love of his previously distant daughter Helen behind him, reinvented himself as a private investigator.
This is where the story starts - George in his office, about to set off on a day that is not routine, an anniversary of an event in which he was involved and embroiled. A day which sees him run the whole gamut of emotions from tenderness and love to hatred, black, seething jealousy, despair and hope.
The strength of this book lies in George's narration. His voice is genuine and credible, both in its ability to relate a gripping story in the voice of an ordinary, ineloquent man,