About the Author

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of many acclaimed novels, two collections of short stories (England and Other Stories, and Learning to Swim and Other Stories) and 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.

Reviews

Praise for "The Light of Day":
"The story draws the reader on like the best whodunit-or, whydunnit. Yet it is also a profoundly artful, beautifully weighted, resonant and humane literary novel."
--"Telegraph" (UK)
"Leave it to one of the great modern storytellers to pen a mystery where the crime is the least important element . . . Swift fashions the detective archetype into a workshop for a discussion of human identity."
--"Winnipeg Free Press"
"[Swift] is a wonderfully original writer and his new work lives up to his reputation as one of England's finest living novelists . . . an intriguing, even mystifying story of the power of passion, murder and redemption."
--"Toronto Sun"
Praise for "Last Orders":
"Graham Swift is a purely wonderful writer, and Last Orders, full of gravity and affection and stylistic brilliance, proves it precisely."
--Richard Ford
"Book for book, Swift is surely one of England's finest living novelists."
--"New York Review of Books" "From the Hardcover edition."

Paula Hook and her husband, Mike, have been together for 25 years, after meeting as college students in 1966. Over that time they have prospered, Mike as the publisher of Living World Books, Paula as director of an upscale art gallery. Now Mike is about to turn 50, and Paula lies in bed thinking of the bombshell revelation that he intends to drop on his children in the morning. Surely they have wondered why their parents are so much older than their friends' parents. Paula's interior monolog fills the entire novel; Mike, the children, and the various relatives are all seen exclusively through her eyes. As a result, the characters don't have much substance. We never see the real Mike at all, only Paula's image of him. A second problem is that Mike's big revelation doesn't seem very earthshaking. While Swift would probably argue that the point is to show that Paula's fears are exaggerated, Paula's insistence that something momentous is about to occur guarantees that the reader will feel shortchanged. Libraries that own Swift's Waterland (1983) or Last Orders (1996) can skip this one. For public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/07.]-Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

"From the Hardcover edition."