Last Orders

Rating:
Summary: Did not meet high expectations
Review: Graham Swift's novel Last Orders has a marvelous premise: a group of elderly gentlemen -- all veterans of the Second World War -- travel from London to scatter in the sea the ashes of a recently deceased comrade. The dearly departed's son, a car dealer, is also with them. On the way, they reflect on their lives, wives, triumphs and disappointments. At one point, two of the men get into a fight. All of this is meant to be both funny (it is) and poignant (it is, sometimes)

Swift's novel has reveived marvelous reviews, so I started with great anticipation after it became available at our local library. I must disagree with the universal critical acclaim. To me, Swift just misses in many of his scenes (his characters, in contrast, are jems). As I read, I kept thinking, "this is supposed to be a wonderful book, yet my mind keeps wandering. What's wrong with me?" After reading some of the other Amazon.com reader comments, I must conclude that the flaw is Swift's.

Rating:
Summary: A marvelous premise imperfectly executed
Review: Graham Swift's novel Last Orders has a marvelous premise: a group of elderly gentlemen -- all veterans of the Second World War -- travel from London to the sea to scatter the ashes of a recently deceased comrade. The dearly departed's son, a car dealer, is also with them. On the way, they reflect on their lives, wives, triumphs and disappointments. At one point, two of the men get into a fight. All of this is meant to be both funny (it is) and poignant (it is, sometimes). Swift's novel has received marvelous reviews, so I started it with great anticipation when it became available at our local library. I must disagree with the universal critical acclaim. To me, Swift just misses in many of his scenes (his characters, in contrast, are gems). As I read, I kept thinking, "this is supposed to be a wonderful book, yet my mind keeps wandering; what's wrong with me?"

Rating:
Summary: Friendship over time
Review: Last Orders by Graham Swift is to date my favorite book. The author's ability to capture the essence of the frienship between the men is riveting. Swift explores the changes that their friendship goes through over time yet still remains strong. His brilliant command of language and unique point of view narration will make any reader rethink their relationships with all their friends.
The writing style is a bit jumpy and difficult to understand at the beginning but the reader gets used to it and the message of the book is worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: Masterfully Written Booker Prize Winner
Review: Ray, an aging punter whose wife left him years ago, sits at the bar of the Coach and Horses pub in Bermondsey. "It aint like your regular sort of day . . . That's why I'm here, five minutes after opening, for a little silent pow-wow with a pint glass."

Ray is joined by his long-time friend, Lenny, and then by Vic, who arrives carrying a box. "He twists the box round so we can see there's a white card sellotaped to one side. There's a date and a number and name: Jack Arthur Dodds." These three friends are soon joined by another, Vince, to scatter the remains of a man they have known since World War II.

Thus begins "Last Orders," Graham Swift's masterfully written Booker Prize winning novel about the day that four old friends carry out the final wish of Jack Dodds, scattering his remains into the surging ocean at the Margate pier. Along the way, driving from Bermondsey to Margate in a big old Mercury, with stops at a naval memorial in Chatham, the Canterbury Cathedral, and a few more pubs, we learn the intimate history of their lives, their friendships and their unfulfilled dreams.

"Last Orders" is written in language that brilliantly captures the thoughts, the feelings and the unfulfilled yearnings of its characters, that vividly paints a picture of the subtle, yet profound, ways in which ordinary lives become intertwined and meaningful. It is a novel marked by humor, but also by a subdued, bittersweet melancholy. While written in the first person, the voices are ever-shifting as the narrative moves from character to character, place to place, backward and forward in time. It is a remarkable narrative achievement, but also one that demands the reader's utmost attention.

Rating:
Summary: It drew me on and on
Review: This story is told in voices, strange at first but increasingly intimate, leaping backward and forward in time, always returning to the journey of four men bound to scatter the ashes of their friend. It is made of the true stuff of real lives, the incidents related seem insubstantial, incabable of sustaining a narative--they do not even seem to make sense at first.

Patiently, Swift draws the reader in. The individual characters define themselves and re-live their lives. More and more is revealed--often through overlapping memories of events related from different points of view. Like a mystery, there are clues and false leads. The solutions, artfully withheld until the final pages, are deeply satisfying.

Somehow, Swift creates from simple lives--none of the characters is well-educated or particularly accomplished--a complex tableau encompassing great humanity. Somehow Jack Dodd, the dead butcher whose ashes fly upward over the sea in the final scene, claims a piece of all of us.

When I finished the last page, I re-read the last sentence aloud to savor the cadences, then sat quietly for a long time.