Graham Swift (1)Kirja-arvosteluja

Rare that I read about male friendship (frenemyship?), especially at this age. A good recommendation for men whose fathers are dead or dying, which I appreciate is niche. Not a patch on Mothering Sunday, mind

Ruminative. So ruminative. Jack and Ellie grew up on neighboring dairy farms in very out-of-the-way North Devon. They both lost their mothers, the dairy cow business went to hell what with the BSE and then hoof and mouth disease, and the only recompense they had in their teenage and young adult years was each other. Lest this sound at all romantic in some sense, it's not very; Jack is the slow silent type without much to say, but it all works well enough. At least for Jack.

Ellie, though satisfied with Jack, is much less satisfied with dairy cow farming in Devon. Which seems a perfectly logical place to have arrived. A fortuitous inheritance finds her in possession of a vacation spot on the Isle of Wight and she convinces Jack to swap out livelihoods, complete with summer trips to the Caribbean. But as it turns out, you can take the slow silent dairy farmer out of the dairy farm, but you can't take the dairy farm out of the slow silent dairy farmer.

When Jack's little brother Tom, who ran off from the farm to join the army on his 18th birthday, is reported dead in Iraq by that army, all the tensions and contradictions of "Jack and Ellie on the Isle of Wight with summers in the Caribbean" are brought to crisis. Ellie can't bring herself to go back to the past. Jack gets swallowed up by it in his grief. The reader is stewed in it, marinated, turned over, and pulled out at last to face the possible violence of its conclusion.

It's a very well constructed and well written novel, illustrating violence - both literal and figurative - done by the modern world to men who once would have taken their place in a solid and traditional society that is suddenly no more. I liked it, but didn't love it.

I first read this novel shortly after the paperback edition was released, almost forty years ago. It had been included in the previous year’s Booker Prize shortlist, and most of the reviews had been appropriately enthusiastic. I had just started in my first proper job, and was revelling in the awareness that, after years of student penury, I could now occasionally take a chance on buying a book on a whim, rather than having to weigh up every purchase against the risk of Micawberesque misery.

And what a book! In just over three hundred pages, Graham Swift offers the reader a history of East Anglia, including insights into political strife, land reclamation, flood management, the finer points of brewing, the beguiling mysteries of the eel, the culmination of the Cold War in the early 1980s, a love story, a murder, and a cautionary tale about incest, all wrapped up in a fascinating exegesis of the nature of history itself.

Tom Crick is, for the moment, Head of History at a large comprehensive school in London, beset with domestic challenges and facing strenuous effort by his headteacher to close his department. His Sixth Form lessons have, however, bucked the trend in which disaffected pupils move away from the humanities. His lessons are swell, because word has spread among the pupils of a new approach to teaching in which Crick’s lessons are suffused with vivid recollections from his own childhood. Crick’s pupils are dejected, convinced that the world is on the brink of a final nuclear war. Forty years earlier, Crick had been growing up in Norfolk during the Second World War, where his father was a lock-keeper responsible for vital flood management in that low lying land, contending with rationing and watching regular bombing missions taking off from the air force bases spread all around the county.

Swift takes his readers through numerous flashbacks, showing how Crick’s family had come to live by the river, and painting the history of the region. The flat landscape, and numerous waterways of the region play a key part in setting the atmosphere of the story. Swift’s prose is as clear as the water in Crick’s father’s lock, and his mastery of the multiple strands of the story is immense. He merges folklore with history, and manage the cast of characters deftly.

I can’t remember which book actually won the Booker Prize when this was a challenger – it must have been jolly good to have beaten this.

Gave this up pretty quickly. I attempted the audio version, so perhaps it translates poorly in that format, but the style made the story entirely impossible to comprehend. I kept checking my ipod to see if it was skipping chapters because there seemed to be no coherent narrative. Just as I thought I had grasped whatever the protagonist was rattling on about, the focus and topic seemed to shift to something else. Perhaps some people find this sort of storytelling gymnastics compelling, but it felt like trying to carry on a conversation with someone suffering from profound dementia.

Somehow this book just completely failed to make any sort of impression on me at all. It follows three people who are in show business as magicians in the 1950s, and flashes back to their childhoods and forward to their old age. The main character was an evacuee in WWII as a child, and was sent to live in an idyllic home where his host family taught him to be a stage magician. He later recruits a couple to join his act, and the relationship between the three of them gets complicated.

I think the book was fine? The characters were reasonably interesting and well-developed? The writing was pretty good? I dunno... I don't really have any complaints about the book, but I don't really have any praise for it either.

Reason read: Booker award winner of 1996, by Graham Swift of a journey that group of war veterans make from Bermondsey to Margate to spread the ashes of one of them who has died. This book reminded me of As I Lay Dying by Faulkner and I guess the author did write this in homage to Faulkner. Last Orders can stand for the wish of the dead man to have his ashes scattered at sea or the last call for drinks at a bar. I liked the story well enough but I do think I liked As I Lay Dying more.

Firstly this book is a lot shorter than it appears, the print is big and there are many small chapters. I got through it very quickly. It starts off in a pub and spends quite a lot of time there throughout the book. It covers a day when 4 men take a friends ashes from London to Margate to scatter them into the sea, but as the day progresses we hear more about their lives, relationships, families, and past history. Its a bit bloke-centric but overall I liked how the emotional background between them all gradually revealed itself in a quiet unassuming way.

A thorough drawing and development of characters, but a little over written given an obsessive and unpromising love story about a private investigator and a gaoled woman who has murdered her cheating husband. It is good because it's written by Graham Swift who always delivers quality.

Basking in the afterglow of an illicit sexual encounter with an affianced gentleman, maid Joan Fairchild ponders what next. She knows he is leaving, and she is sure that their tryst will not come to light, but otherwise things are unclear to her as an orphan on Mothering Sunday. The author reveals that future, which Joan could never have anticipated as she lay on his bed and roamed naked in his house.

This is a fairly inconsequential novella. Swift writes about the literary muse and how experience informs a novelist's prose, but there will always be some truth held back. Hardly a searing insight, but the book is a pleasant enough read for people who like Downton Abbey and similar Edwardian aristos and servants stories. Swift writes beautifully of the period, although I could have done without his fixation on cum stains.

Las clases del profesor de historia Tom Crick, cuya esposa acaba de raptar a un niño son muy particulares: nada de fechas, batallas o héroes, apenas el pasado del maestro y la vieja lucha de su familia contra los pantanosos Fens ingleses. A pesar de las directrices de la escuela, Crick elige contar su vida antes que dictar el tradicionalmente amable programa de la materia. Con la misma tenaz paciencia que sus antepasados utilizaron para derrotar la obstinación acuática de los movedizos Fens, el curioso docente se irá rodeando de sus más íntimos fantasmas, inseguridades, miedos y dudas. ¿Sirve para algo la Historia? ¿Por qué motivo una mujer cambia el amor de su marido por la devoción a Dios? ¿En qué momento todo empieza a ir mal?

El país del agua ha sido unánimemente reconocida como una de las mejores novelas de la literatura británica de las últimas décadas. Las clases del profesor de historia Tom Crick cuya esposa acaba de raptar a un niño son muy particulares: nada de fechas, batallas o héroes, apenas el pasado del maestro y la vieja lucha de su familia contra los pantanosos Fens ingleses. A pesar de las intimidatorias amenazas del más que ortodoxo director de la escuela, un confundido pero perseverante Crick elige contar su vida antes que dictar el tradicionalmente amable programa de la materia. Así, mientras cuestiona la necesidad de investigar la memoria, el cadáver de un adolescente aparece flotando detrás de las esclusas de los recuerdos, un estudiante se manifiesta harto de tanto desvarío pedagógico y, con la misma tenaz paciencia que sus antepasados utilizaron para derrotar la obstinación acuática de los movedizos Fens, el curioso docente se irá rodeando de sus más íntimos fantasmas, inseguridades, miedos y dudas. ¿Sirve para algo la Historia? ¿Por qué motivo una mujer cambia el amor de su marido por la devoción a Dios? ¿En qué momento todo empieza a ir mal? Las respuestas, quimeras que pretenderán vengar la secreta impunidad del presente, se le aparecerán embarradas, sugestivas y distantes; todavía en el frío paisaje de su infancia como pistas abandonadas que esperan el regreso del culpable al lugar del crimen.

El país del agua, ganadora de los Premios Guardian y Royal Society of Literature, es una conmovedora y brillantísima reflexión sobre las ambigüedades del conocimiento, las imposibilidades del amor, y las idas y venidas del Tiempo. En una geografía melancólica en donde las estrellas son bendiciones divinas que un día decidieron dejar de caer, los cuentos de familia se suceden con extraordinario encanto, apasionada crueldad y refinada belleza.

«Una ruda saga familiar, un relato detectivesco y una reflexión filosófica sobre la naturaleza y los usos de la Historia»

(The New York Times).

«El país del agua es, al mismo tiempo, una historia de Inglaterra, un documento sobre los Fens y una autobiografía de ficción. La rareza y los extraños efectos de "el paisaje que más se acerca a la Nada" son magníficos. El país del agua es a los Fens lo que Moby Dick a la caza de ballenas ... Esta es una bella, seria e inteligente novela, admirablemente ambiciosa y original»

(Hermione Lee, The Observer).

«Las más memorables novelas de los últimos diez años son Los hijos de la medianoche, El nombre de la rosa, La vida instrucciones de uso y El país del agua»

(D. J. Taylor, British fiction in the 1980s).

Graham Swift’s latest novel is Here We Are (Virago), set in the late Fifties and early Sixties and in which three end of pier performers find their off-stage lives entwined in complex ways as a result of their evolving circumstances. Swift skilfully moves us backwards and forwards in time while building our emotional connection with the characters. It’s a simple story at its heart but layered with complexity and as much magic as the illusion acts that are portrayed on the stage. Not following the recent trend from his peers of the doorstep, life-story tomes, it’s a slim, perfectly formed novel which belies the amount and quality of its ingredients along with their expert combination and smooth, clever, and easily digested result.½

As the story opens, Jack has died and four of his friends are gathered in a London pub to carry out his last wishes regarding scattering his ashes. This small group of characters reminisces about Jack, which leads them to musings about the past. We learn their backstories through flashbacks, along with facts about Jack’s life. It is told in an atmospheric way. The tone is wistful. It is a quiet and reflective story. It is not all that dynamic, but I enjoyed it and am glad I read it. This book won the Booker Prize in 1996.

3.5½

Liked the beautiful, wryly funny writing. I’d never heard of the author before but I read a good short story of his in the New Yorker last month so I looked him up. Guess he’s a big deal (and I’m not in the loop). I thought the ending was a bit abrupt maybe? Great thoughts about the importance and unreliability of “family history” - reminded me of Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively in that sense.

A marvelous morsel that's whetted my appetite for more Swift. Not quite Remains of the Day, but then what is?

Graham Swift has a wonderful way with words, creating characters and scenarios artfully from just the minimum. Over the course of Mothering Sunday, he reveals how one day shaped the life of Jane Fairchild, gradually revealing the rest of her life in this novella.

On the exceptionally warm and sunny day in March, Jane is a servant for the Nivens, a couple who lost their sons during the Great War. Mothering Sunday is a ‘day off’ (post breakfast and before dinner) for the servants, an opportunity to visit their own mothers. For Jane, that’s not possible as she’s an orphan. Her plans are to find somewhere quiet and sunny and read one of the books from the Niven’s library (with permission of course, Mr Niven is supportive of Jane’s reading). But a phone call to the house beckons her to ride to her lover’s house, where he is alone. Paul is about to marry someone else, and Jane is not quite sad, not quite envious. She’s curious as to what Paul’s fiancé Emma is like and fairly accepting of the class differences between them. Afterwards, Paul must meet his fiancé for lunch but tells Jane to stay in the house as long as she likes. Big houses don’t really hold an allure for her, so she returns to the Nivens early, only to meet Mr Niven. A shocking thing has happened, and knocks both of them for six. In a way, this defines a turning point in Jane’s life and sets her towards becoming a writer.

Jane’s future is gradually revealed over the course of the novel, first via a sentence here and there until it takes over the last part of the novella. It’s in contrast to the slow, lazy morning of that day and its shocking conclusion. Piecing together Jane’s life over the novel was fun, as was languishing over each of Swift’s sentences. He captures the melancholy post-war as well as the change in the air as the end draws near for big houses and servants. It’s beautifully constructed, creating emotion through experience of one woman’s eyes. This is the kind of novel that makes a reader’s heart sing.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

Book drones on about the love affair of a maid who becomes a celebrated author. Author’s annoying style presents a scene out of order and time and then returns later to fill in what preceded and followed scene . Too complicated and not worth effort.

Thius is the story of a group of friends in England who are charged with carrying out the "last orders" of Jack Dodds, that of scattering his ashes into the sea at Margate. Each chapter is told in the voice of a different character weaving back and forth through time.

Even though this book was a Booker Prize winner, I found it very hard to read. I couldn't keep the characters straight. I couldn't follow some of the local dialect and felt, with that, I was losing some of the story. I finished it, but only because others have thought of it more highly than myself, and I wanted to see why.

I can't say I enjoyed this book but I did find it somewhat intriguing. I thought the premise was interesting but didn't find the story sufficiently developed.

A 22 year old woman, in service, is having a secret physical relationship with the son of her employers' close friends. Two weeks before he is to be married to another "socially acceptable" young woman they have their final liaison.

It is the morning of Mothering Sunday, 1924 when he calls her to issue the invitation. This is the one day of the year that practically every servant in England is given the day off to visit family. Because they know they will be alone this assignation is unlike any previous. She entered his home through the front door and went to his bedroom. The day however, did not end as expected.

C’est érotique, sensuel, aristocratique… vielle Angleterre coquine… Mais c’est un peu confus

En fait, c’est sympa, mais je sais pas trop où ça va… un peu… Oui, c’est sympa mais flou et emmêlé comme un nuage d’été

First published in 1988 and, interestingly enough, it shows. Estranged father and daughter tell their sides of the story in alternate chapters with the Grandfather butting in from time to time. As the father was a well known war photographer all the wars of the era are namechecked, Algeria, Vietnam, the Northern Ireland Troubles the Falkland Islands. A heavy topic but a bit of a lightweight treatment.

Graham Swift is op zijn 70ste nog altijd één van de beste Engelse schrijvers van het moment. Zeker op compositorisch vlak is hij onevenaarbaar. Dit boek is misschien niet zijn beste (voor mij zijn dat nog altijd ‘Waterland’ en ‘Mother Sunday’) maar ook met dit verhaal weet Swift te imponeren. Op zich is het niet zo spectaculair, uiteindelijk draait het om een koppel dat even, in 1959 schitterde met een goochel-act op de pier van Brighton. Maar Swift verweeft het magnifiek met het thema van de illusie van de liefde. De aanloop van het verhaal is vrij traag, maar zeker voorbij de helft voert hij het tempo danig op naar een ontknoping die pas op het einde de dubbele bodem in de titel van het boek ‘here we are’ blootlegt. Knap gedaan. Zeker ook omdat Swift weer enkele stilistische hoogstandjes opvoert, zoals de scene waarin de 75-jarige Evie ’s ochtends haar tuin in het herfstig zonlicht ziet baden en de talloze fijnmazige, zilveren spinnenwebben aan haar struiken ziet hangen. Wat een prachtig beeld, dat de auteur zelfs met een erg aangrijpende, existentiële ervaring verbindt.

Robert Webb, I will never forgive you for recommending this novel! I watched Between the Covers, the BBC book club with Sara Cox, to pick up some TBR tips from celebrities and Robert Webb's favourite book - "I gave it to my last two girlfriends – including my wife – and David Mitchell, and they all liked it" (ha!) - was definitely a fail.

Combining two of my most hated literary devices - smug male narrators and thinly veiled themes overloading the story - this somnambulant disaster was only good at sending me straight to sleep after ploughing through more than a paragraph. In the spirit of Stoner, pompous history teacher Tom Crick is being forced to 'retire' after his wife steals a baby and gets put away. He spends his final term holding his class hostage with a convoluted and tedious history of his life, interspersed with random lectures on the Norfolk fens, rivers, eels and even phlegm at one point (like a very British Les Mis!)

When he was a young boy, living with his widowed lockkeeper father and slow older brother (charmingly termed a 'potato head'), one of Tom's schoolfriends drowned in the river, and we poor readers spend the whole book waiting for the obvious to be confirmed - everything is always a woman's fault! Freddie Parr was pushed into the river as a (mistaken) rival for a young girl's affection. Why did older Tom's wife - the same girl at the centre of the childhood drama - steal a baby? Childhood trauma robbed her of the chance of becoming a mother, of course!

Added to the Wikipedia articles and drawn-out memoirs of a failed Dead Poets Society wannabe, we also get ridiculous melodrama in the form of local history. Two families, the Cricks and the Atkinsons, represent the past and the future of the fens, the one respecting the river and the other damming the water up and building sluice gates and locks in the spirit of Victorian progress. The Atkinsons, however, are gothic nightmares, complete with zombie wives and literal inbreeding - so of course the two families join together and the result is the narrator and his brother.

All of this water-centric madness could have been acceptable - even entertaining, like Michael McDowell's Blackwater saga - but for the writing:

And thus the history teacher—though his relation with his young charges echoes first the paternal, then the grand-paternal, though he sees in their faces (but does not admit it) less and less the image of the future, more and more that of something he is trying to retrieve, something he has lost—could always say (he acquires a penchant for paradox) that he looked back in order to look forward.

Pages and pages of pontificating drivel, punctuated with annoying half sentences - 'If she had ...', 'But then ...' No wonder I kept falling asleep! I hated Tom, adult and child/preteen - not to mention the very Stephen King preoccupation with young kids touching each other and playing 'You show me yours' that made the childhood scenes even more creepy - and that was before he kicked his pet dog so hard that he needed his jaw wiring. Yikes - why am I supposed to care about this man exactly?

For lovers of Stoner-esque characters only.

A story that can be encapsulated in a paragraph; the writer's art allows the story to be spun out to novella length; and you wonder all the while if there's enough substance here to counteract the centrifugal force trying to push everything beyond breaking point as the story spins around its axis of a single incident. It holds together - just.½

I got so bogged down in the ruminative structure of this novel and at the same time found I cared little about any of its characters. I didn’t really believe the farm setting and thought the repeated trope of cow diseases was factitous. The last quarter I read only first sentences of paragraphs and felt I didn’t lose a lot. Is this just a bulked up short story. Is that what Swift does - works up what are basically short stories? A short story cannot stretch to nearly 400 pages.