The Light of Day

Rating:
Summary: Fate Rules, OK?
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Swiftly disappointed
Review: If only because it is Graham Swift, I feel I have a right to be disappointed. After all, this is the Brit who gave us "Waterland" and "Last Orders," a writer has been compared to Dickens and Faulkner. That is not to say that there are not some good things about "Light of Day," his latest novel. The jokes may be a bit heavy-handed (a murderess is "dressed to kill"), but there is a residue of Swift's deadpan sense of humor. His hero is a divorced detective who has taken up cooking and who can't seem to help bedding his female clients, and then assimilating them into his life. As in his earlier, and far superior work, "Shuttlecock," the story is a mystery that doesn't get solved-it's not the who that's important, but the why. As in "The Sweet-Shop Owner" and "Waterland," a leading character is a woman whose behavior is indecipherable, particularly to the man who loves her, George Webb (great name for a private eye, by the way), the answers to whose questions must await his loved one's re-emergence from prison into "the light of day." But the elements don't add up to much here. The text is more like notes toward a novel, rather than the real thing itself. I wanted to know more about these people, not in the sense of learning their motivation, which is understandably opaque, especially in the case of something as outré as murder, but at least to the extent of seeing George in action with the object of his affection, Susan, on at least one occasion where he wasn't tongue-tied. This novel took Swift seven years to write. He has had bad patches before; between the marvels of "Waterland" and "Last Orders" came the disappointing "Out of This World" and "Ever After." But those were much more ambitious and therefore forgivable failures than "Light of Day," which, while continuing to explore Swift's favorite theme of qualified hope for the future, is tentative at best.

Rating:
Summary: AN IMPORTANT BOOK
Review: Not only an important book, The Light Of Day is an important work of art. Booker Prize winner Graham Swift skillfully paints his protagonist's past and hoped for future within the frame of one single day.

George Webb is a former policeman, relieved of his duties by poor judgment and ensuing scandal. Rachel, his wife, responded to these events by leaving him.

"We both knew which way it worked for Rachel," George opines. " Rachel decided - almost overnight - that I wasn't just a bad cop, I was a bad husband, a bad deal altogether. Rachel decided I was no longer for her and went her own way."

With little but a policeman's training to recommend him, George becomes a private investigator reduced to tracking down evidence of unfaithful husbands or wives for their vengeful spouses. Enter Sarah Nash, a teacher , and prospective client who comes to occupy his every thought.

Rather than follow her husband, Sarah has an altogether different request. She already knows that her husband Bob has been having an affair with her pupil and their houseguest, Kristina, a Croatian refugee. Now, according to Bob, the affair is over and Kristina will return to Croatia. Sarah wants the pair watched to make sure the girl really boards the plane.

Throughout this tense, dark narrative, all of which takes place in George's mind, we learn of the day he first discovered that his father was an adulterer, and relive the joy he feels when having dinner with his daughter, Helen.

We also are privy to his dreams of the future as he waits for Sarah who has been imprisoned.

Graham Swift's remarkable soul baring novel is a reminder of the twists and turns that life may take as well as a haunting psychological drama.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Unfortunately, I was far less enamoured of The Light of Day than the four reviewers who have already posted. I love most of Graham Swift's novels: Last Orders, The Sweet Shop Owner, Waterland, etc. I was very excited to purchase and read TLOD. The experience was very disappointing. I wouldn't mind the narrowness of the book's temporal span (essentially, it follows the protagonist's emotions over the course of a single day, although memories and flashbacks reach back many years), were it not for the fact that I find the book's emotional and thematic range similarly limited. By the midway point of the book, Swift had pretty much covered the range of emotions experienced by George and exhausted the character's development. From a thematic and emotional standpoint, the rest of the book was mostly repetition of ground that already had been covered.
Also, the pseudo-detective story overlay for the novel wears thin quickly. Any real "suspense" dissipates quickly, leaving the gumshoe-as-metaphor-for-exploration-of-mysteries-of-the-heart concept a fairly intrusive and clunky affectation to drag through the remainder of the book.
This may have been a good idea for a long story or short novella, but it doesn't hold up for a whole novel. Frankly, I had to force myself to finish it, which is remarkably different from my experience with other of Swift's novels.