Ever After
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Product Description
Product Description
‘Ever After deals with happiness, despair, self-doubt and the exhilarating persistence of the human sense of wonder. It is also a luminous testimony to the power of love’ Daily Mail
Book Description
‘A subtle book that lingers in the mind . . . Here is a writer of very considerable power’ Daily Telegraph An academic sits alone in his college room thinking about the people he has lost. Powerful memories crowd in on him – childhood days in Paris; his exuberant, glamorous mother; his mysterious father; and the brash young American who becomes his step-father. Mingled with this emerges a tender portrait of his relationship with his actress wife. Ever After is a poignant elegy to lost faith and lost hope. It is also a powerful affirmation of love. ‘Touching and beguiling . . . Graham Swift has written a deeply felt and rather haunting novel’ Anita Brookner, Spectator ‘Swift is set apart by his acute observation and thrilling exactness of description . . . Exceptional’ The Times ‘A remarkable feat’ Evening Standard ‘Graham Swift has performed a literary tour de force in this novel’ Literary Review
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As with Waterland, Graham's Swift's main accomplishment here is to stealthy wind the past into emotion and storyline. The airtight plot is both fascinating and extremely well written - it is a self-consciously beautiful piece of writing about love and death, but in the end it is a life-affirming peice of work. It may not equal Swift's outstanding acheivment Waterland, but it follows the same lines and at times is more pounding and emotional than the latter would ever be.
Format:Paperback
Ever After is a rumination on death, faith, and finding meaning in life more than a proper novel. The narrator, Bill Unwin, is recovering from a failed suicide. His convalescence is used to muse over the fate of the father he never knew, and who may not even have been his father, and the ravings of his hedonistic mother over the vanity of posterity. Meanwhile, he is withholding the manuscript of one of his Victorian ancestors from a fellow Cambridge don, a vain, publicity-seeking but successful rival. This is finally the motive for a second, parallel plot, in many ways the more interesting, about the Victorian in forebear in question, Matthew Pearce. For Pearce, surveyor, amateur fossil-collector, and son-in-law to the local parson, is a man of his age, scientifically inclined yet religious. Lyell, Darwin cannot fail to attract Pearce, yet they also threaten his marriage and family, his very social standing.
'To be or not to be' is the book's starting point, and indeed Graham makes the parallels explicit. Unwin, for example, suspects his step-father of having been the cause of his father's suicide. The problem is that Ever After functions poorly as a novel. The hero, to start with, is lacking in attractive features. Oh-so-very-British self-deprecation is admirable, but it is hardly a heart-winner on its own, especially without much humour. But the main issue is that the narrative style is too derivative. It only ever offers a thirty-thousand feet view of its characters, failing to bring them to life. This novel is very much second best to Last Orders, and it is a quickly forgotten piece.
'To be or not to be' is the book's starting point, and indeed Graham makes the parallels explicit. Unwin, for example, suspects his step-father of having been the cause of his father's suicide. The problem is that Ever After functions poorly as a novel. The hero, to start with, is lacking in attractive features. Oh-so-very-British self-deprecation is admirable, but it is hardly a heart-winner on its own, especially without much humour. But the main issue is that the narrative style is too derivative. It only ever offers a thirty-thousand feet view of its characters, failing to bring them to life. This novel is very much second best to Last Orders, and it is a quickly forgotten piece.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
... and Even Beyond
16 Oct 1996
Format:Paperback
What a poignant and eloquent account of life (or at least the illusion of being alive) by an obviously seasoned and sensitive artist!
Swift describes the sublimely vivid yet hazy realizations about a bookish yet intuitive academic's quest for the pure meaning in his life.
Delicious portraits of life in Paris, recollections of finding and losing true love and friendship, and a yearning to prove or disprove the
validity of doctrinized religion are blended amidst the collage of dabbles with sexuality, betrayal, perceptions of human nature, and the
tragic Hamlet condition of jealousy pangs for a mother who, upon close character inspection, has even further muddled the once secure
ideals regarding family and lineage. There is hardly any well-defined escape out of this complicated entangling, but the seemingly nonexistent
resolution may actually shed an enlightening view upon the meaning of existence... if you read closely enough between the lines. Savor this
one and enjoy.
Swift describes the sublimely vivid yet hazy realizations about a bookish yet intuitive academic's quest for the pure meaning in his life.
Delicious portraits of life in Paris, recollections of finding and losing true love and friendship, and a yearning to prove or disprove the
validity of doctrinized religion are blended amidst the collage of dabbles with sexuality, betrayal, perceptions of human nature, and the
tragic Hamlet condition of jealousy pangs for a mother who, upon close character inspection, has even further muddled the once secure
ideals regarding family and lineage. There is hardly any well-defined escape out of this complicated entangling, but the seemingly nonexistent
resolution may actually shed an enlightening view upon the meaning of existence... if you read closely enough between the lines. Savor this
one and enjoy.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A brilliant writer
13 Feb 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a true masterpiece, subtle, profound, exquisitely written. Among the best in modern literature. The writer offers insights into romantic love, and into the minds of scholars and actresses. It deals with the impact of Darwin's ideas on religious minds. The elegant and precise prose reminds me of the witty twists of Nabokov,and the ironic satire of Italo Svevo. A must read for those who appreciate literature.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
An allegory with a twist
1 Aug 1996
Format:Paperback
Graham Swift is the last great story teller-- a combination of Ernest Hemingway and Aesop. By juxtaposing the first person narrative of a disenchanted college proffessor (sp?) and the diaries of an early believer in the evolutionary theaory of nature (Darwin), Swift spins a tale of morality without a moral, and draws paralells between the two protagonists and their respective searches for the answer to one untimelly question- does anythnig really matter? Swift's vivid yet spare prose mirrors the paradoxical nature of both his main characters. Each is at once vulnerable and cynical, courageous but exhausted, afraid to be alone, and afraid of intimacy. Swift could have ended by providing a clearly defined answer to his own characters question thus weakening the realistic tone he had set throughout. However, he refuses to tie such a neat bow. Swift merelly aknowledges that asking the question "is anything divine?" is more important than finding a concrete answer. Swift supposes finally that life is a journey made of questions and we can either rejoice in the precarious nature of such a subjective path, or allow it to cause us to despair.
On the way from page one to the last paragraph, the reader is made to sift through interesting musings concerning Shakespeare, Darwinism, Paris, male/female relationships, suicide, and academic politics.
Graham Swift is possibly the finest modern English writer, and this is quite possibly his finest novel to date.
On the way from page one to the last paragraph, the reader is made to sift through interesting musings concerning Shakespeare, Darwinism, Paris, male/female relationships, suicide, and academic politics.
Graham Swift is possibly the finest modern English writer, and this is quite possibly his finest novel to date.
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