What Book to Read?

Some writers draw heavily on their own experiences when they write, but this is not the case for Graham Swift. He believes absolutely in the power of the imagination. In his view, ‘if your imagination cannot transport you mentally from where you are to somewhere quite different, then don’t be a novelist, be something else’. 

Nevertheless, Swift usually writes about ordinary people and ordinary events.  ‘I am the kind of writer’ he says, ‘—it should be pretty obvious—who certainly starts with the ordinary world. The world around the corner, the familiar world. And if there is going to be anything extraordinary, I will find it in that. Of course, there is something extraordinary. There are many extraordinary things’.

He is particularly interested in the interplay between past and present, and how past events influence present actions. This includes conflict between generations, and how the choices of one generation influence the next.  He raises the whole issue of the way we construct a view of the past, and how unreliable that view may be, both in terms of personal histories, and public ones.  Because of the interplay between past and present, his books are often not a linear narrative, but move between then and now, gradually providing a fuller picture of events, motivations and emotions. 

 In Last Orders, his imagination, his concern for ordinary people and events and his interest in the interaction of past and present have created a story set in one day about four aging men who drive from London to Margate. The purpose of their journey is to fulfill the request of their dead friend, Jack Dodds, that his ashes be scattered in the sea off Margate Pier. During the course of the day, the reader comes to understand the friendships and tensions between each of the men, and something of their relationships with their own families, and with Jack’s wife, Amy. The chief spokesman is Ray, but all the others, including Jack and Amy, are given a voice, and these interweave to build up a picture of their own lives and interactions with the others. Sometimes the characters describe events as they happen, some is told as recollection of the past, and some as flashback to past events.  By the end of the day, decisions have been made that may lead the characters to a better future.

 The prose is simple and colloquial. Although the characters are not very articulate, Swift succeeds brilliantly in his aim of revealing their thoughts and feelings– the love, the loss, the frustrations, the guilt and betrayals, the hopes and aspirations of ordinary people trying to cope with life and death in lives that yet contain, as Swift says, moments that are extraordinary.

In 2001, a film of Last Orders was released.  Written and directed by Fred Schepisi, it has a wonderful cast, including Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and David Hemmings. It is one of those rare films where the cast is perfect and the production seems flawlessly to have captured the spirit of Swift’s book. But Swift himself still prefers books to films ‘because what you get on the screen it may be marvelous but the screen is saying, “This is it.” Everyone sitting out there is going to see this and see the same thing.’ Whereas with reading, he says: ‘It’s a wonderful, personal, private kind of chemistry which occurs between you and the pages of the book, and it’s a very free thing because as we all know every reader reads the book in their own way. [With film] they have an experience, which is defined for them’. But I think it’s still worth seeing the film.