Last Orders

New York, NY: Vintage International, Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc, 1997. Later printing. Trade paperback. Good. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. [8], 294, [2] pages. Illustrations. This is a tie-in to the motion picture, which photograph of cast on the front cover. Signed by author. Cover has some wear and soiling. A few corners creased and minor ink underlining noted only on page 80. Graham Colin Swift FRSL (born 4 May 1949) is an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. Some of Swift's books have been filmed, including Last Orders, starring Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins and Waterland, starring Jeremy Irons. Last Orders was joint-winner of the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and a controversial winner of the 1996 Booker Prize, owing to the superficial similarities in plot to William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Waterland is set in The Fens; a novel of landscape, history and family, it is often cited as one of the outstanding post-war British novels and has been a set text on the English literature syllabus in British schools. Last Orders is a 1996 Booker Prize-winning novel by British writer Graham Swift. In 2001 it was adapted for the film Last Orders by Australian writer and director Fred Schepisi. The story makes much use of flashbacks to tell the convoluted story of the relationships between a group of war veterans who live in the same corner of London, the backbone of the story being the journey of the group from Bermondsey to Margate to scatter the ashes of Jack Dodds into the sea, in accord with his last wishes. The narrative is split into short sections told by the main characters as well as updates along the journey at Old Kent Road, New Cross, Blackheath, Dartford, Gravesend, Rochester, Chatham Naval Memorial and Canterbury Cathedral. The title 'Last Orders' not only refers to these instructions as stipulated in Jack Dodd's will, but also alludes to the 'last orders (of the day)'-the last round of drinks to be ordered before a pub closes, as drinking was a favorite pastime of Jack and the other characters. Derived from a Kirkus review: Swift's sixth novel is a captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative is developed with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, the story starts to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along and why three marriages out of three broke apart. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.