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Wish You Were Here
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 DescriptionFROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, and reissued for the first time in Scribner, comes a novel called 'Profound and powerful . . . an unputdownable read' by Scotland on Sunday. On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton - former Devon farmer, now proprietor of a seaside caravan park - receives the news that his brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq. For Jack and his wife Ellie this will have a potentially catastrophic impact and compel Jack to make a crucial journey: to receive his brother's remains, but also to return to the land of his past and confront his most secret, troubling memories. Praise for Mothering Sunday: 'Bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly... Swift's small fiction feels like a masterpiece' Guardian 'Alive with sensuousness and sensuality ... wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement' Sunday Times 'From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. The archly modulated, precise prose (a hybrid of Henry Green and Kazuo Ishiguro) is a glory to read. Now 66, Swift is a writer at the very top of his game' Evening Standard 'Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives - the parallel stories - we can never know ... It may just be Swift's best novel yet' Observer ReviewsReviews from the UK: "Like its predecessors, most notably "Waterland "and "Last Orders, Wish You Were Here "is a book of quiet emotional integrity . . . The novel expertly explores the poignant contrast between irrepressible human hope and the constraints within which we live our finite lives." - "The Times" "An extraordinary novel . . . Novelists, being on the whole brainy people, like to write about brainy people, or make their characters better with words than they would be in real life . . . But as Swift's novels so brilliantly prove, just because someone doesn't have a way with words doesn't mean they can't experience deep emotion, or be powerfully moved by the forces of history and time . . . I doubt there is a better novelist than Swift for this kind of story." - "Evening Standard" "Like Ian McEwan's "Saturday, "or Sebastian Faulks's "A Week in December, "this novel draws on events from the news pages . . . But this emotionally complex novel is not mere reportage . . . It is Swift's most intimately revelatory novel yet . . . This is a profound and powerful portrait of a nation and a man in crisis that, for all its gentle intensity, also manages to be an unputdownable read." - "Scotland on Sunday" "Wish You Were Here "is a work of wide, ambitious span . . . Recounted in pages of affecting, powerfully sober prose . . . What gives [the novel] a compelling hold is Swift's real strength, the authenticity that hallmarks his portrayals of people in crisis." - "The Sunday Times" "An acutely observed, compelling read." - "Daily Mail" "Swift is as brilliant as ever on the potency of family myth . . . This novel is often astonishingly moving." - "Sunday Express" "I cannot tell you exactly how long after I finished this book that I sat, holding it, in stunned silence for--but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do that to you. This is one of them . . . Author descriptionGraham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eight acclaimed novels and a collection of short stories; his most recent work is Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize (1983), and with Last Orders the Booker Prize (1996). Both novels have since been made into films. Graham Swift's work has appeared in over thirty languages. |
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