Rating: 
Summary: Working Class Canterbury Tales?
Review: I found the constant change from character to character and from time frame to time frame made the story difficult to get into. Whatever humor there was in this story escapes me. What a very sad commentary on the family relationships of the characters. Only two seemed to have any satisfaction in their lives. Depressing at best. The fact that I needed to read this for a book club discussion is the only thing that caused me to persevere to the end.
Rating: 
Summary: I had high expectations, but something was missing.
Review: I had very high expectations when I purchased Last Orders. It seemed to hold the promise of revealing rare human insight, as told by a master storyteller, not withstanding the fact it won the Booker Prize.
I found keeping track of all the charcters, their nicknames and the short chapters somewhat confusing at times. It didn't sustain my attention.
However, it does have its good points. All told, it is a good, not a great story. The characters are deeply drawn, you do care about them, and the dialogue is authentic blue collar London, which I enjoyed.
Although I was sorely disappointed by Last Orders, I believe it deserves a second read.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimately unstaisfying
Review: I read this book as part of a discussion group and frankly, I would not have finished it if I did not plan to be discussing it. The characteriation is very well done but the book as a whole, left me flat. Perhaps the way the reader is led from one man's perpective to the other on a number of events made me anticipate a revelation of some sort. The revelation never comes and I was left thinking, "Interesting but.??.."
Rating:
Summary: Left me dissatisfied
Review: I think I must be missing something. Perhaps because I'm a girl, and this is a story of male loves and friendships, I found this book profoundly unsatisfying. It should have pushed all the right buttons - the story of four friends going to scatter the ashes of the man whose presence interwove their lives. With a premise like that, and an author as lyrical as Swift, it should have been a deep and moving meditation on mortality and the patterns that make up our lives.
But it wasn't.
Or, at least, I didn't find it so. Judging by the host of commendations it received, this was my fault, not the book's.
For me, though, this book fell down in a number of concrete ways.
The story is told through several voices, but I found three of the main voices, Len, Vic and Ray difficult to differentiate. (Perhaps, said the voice inside me which believes the Booker Prize judges, he was trying to say that they're very similar people really. Maybe, but if so, this was a confusing way to do it.)
The characters were incredibly articulate about their feelings internally, but extremely inarticulate towards one another. (The voice of the Booker Prize said - ah, this is a marvellous truth - the things left unspoken, the words we can never say.... But my own taste said - this doesn't make sense. The fact that they think one thing and then say something completely different to each other just makes it seem that they're lying.)
It seemed unrealistic that the lives of these people would be so heavily dependent on one another. (The Booker Prize said - beautiful! The interweaving of one person's life with another - the unintended effects...)
What can I say? I wish I could point to a single glaring fault and say "that just ruined it for me," but I can't. Everything that the Booker Prize says is true, and yet it just didn't strike me that way.
From reading what others have written here, it seems that there is a definite split, which comforts me because, in the final analysis, what I saw here was a book that would have been meditative and thoughtful if it had had anything to meditate on or think about.
Rating:
Summary: brilliant disappointment
Review: I'm with the critics. It's as if Swift deliberately made this book difficult. While there are plenty of lines that hit you right between the eyes, far far fewer than in the dazzling Waterland. It's worth reading, but I recommend at top speed, with no stopping and no looking back (just like life...)
Rating: 
Summary: Missed opportunities to connect, one hope of redemption.
Review: Imagine the voices of a group of men life long friends, ea of whom is not introspective or contemplative talking to you the reader as they carry one of their drinking buddies to his requested last resting place, the sea off the jetty in Margate. The missed opportunities for warmth among themselves as well as ea with his family swell into tragedy, with maybe one hope of redemption as they travel down the English countryside with the ashes of Jack. Their casual friendships are revealed as intertwined in ways they do not even speak about to one another - some have lusted after the wives or daughters of others, one has carried a hatred toward adoptive parents, one has refused to ever visit his 50 year old daughter born with severe defects, one has had his wife and his daughter leave him, another has sold his daughter into a relationship with a rich man who will buy his cars. The intimate relationships are mostly carried on without speech. These failures are revealed in an ironic manner as they each speak to you to reader, but not to each other. Interest may flag in the beginning of the book, humor may distract you, but about 40 pages in, it is too late, you are drowning in their tragedy, the hopeless failure to connect.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good reading; engaging storyline.
Review: In sharing my opinion of this book I should point out that English is my second language. This could had been a serious deterrent in enjoying this book as there is the occasional use of British slang and many references to locales and social customs. Despite of this, the storyline is so engaging, the characters so real, and the descriptions of the landscape so vivid that I enjoyed this book inmensely. I am looking forward to read more of Mr. Swift's work.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: In Swift's hands the dingy ordinariness of his characters' dramas is haunting. The book is full of love, thwarted, misdirected, unspoken, but palpable and heartbreaking.
Rating:
Summary: It's supposed to be such a good book, but...
Review: It just never captured my interest. Many reviewers said the characters and situations were funny and authentic. Taking the garbage out is an authentic actitity, too; but terribly uninteresting. What is funny about this group of pathetically boring characters and their box of ashes? I forced myself to finish this book, but found it a great disappointment. I agree with the Boston Review's comments. It is a banal book.
Rating:
Summary: Moment of Ultimate Truth
Review: Last orders (either in a pub before its closing-time or in one's lifetime before its termination) is a moment of final decision, a moment of ultimate truth. Everyone who has faced in their life a death of any intimate person - a friend or relative - comes to a conclusion that funeral rites are intended not for the deceased (who is already in some other place, far from this mortal coil) but for those who are still alive. Death of every person portends personal departure and compels to appraise their own life, to encounter the truth, at least tacitly. The novel of Graham Swift is the most perfect description (I've ever read) of that painful process. Before his death Jack Dodd ordered to scatter his ashes into the ocean from Margate Pier. His three intimate friends and adopted son perform the order. Their (and some other person's) short conversations, intertwined memories and interdependent thoughts during this trip from London to Margate polyphonically form the story - warmth of human love and compassion, bitterness of mutual misunderstanding and disappointment, unrealized dreams, ambiguity of love&hate relations between father and son, - all that molds individual lives. It is significant that their way lies through Canterbury and its Cathedral, for self-comprehension is impossible without personal repentance and vindication of another's sins and misdeeds. The last chapter of the book is surprisingly calm: the human harmony undisturbed by berserk weather gives hope that accomplished mission was not in vain. Author's mastery in representing distinct voices of his heroes surpasses every praise. Those, for whom English is only second language (as for me),at first can be perplexed by abundance of slang terms and indigenous allusions. Please make efforts and you will be rewarded galore. Do not hasten to discern all personal interrelations from the first pages, believe the author, he will skillfully relate everything. Similar to a frozen window-glass gradually clearing one's vision with every movement of one's warm hand, each narrator of the story will tell their perception of events. If in the end something stays a bit fuzzy or blurred, it is not author's fault - such is our real life where absolute knowledge is unattainable. An excellent and justly awarded novel.
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