Last Orders by Graham Swift

Well done to those of you who read the whole of my last post – it was a bit of a lengthy one – so I’ll endeavour to be a little more succinct in my ramblings…!  I’m having a harder time finding the books in my local library even armed with my new and improved alphabetised list of the winners!  It would appear that I have exhausted their ready supply of books and so now I have to resort to reserving and requesting books from other libraries.  This is a bit of an hassle as it requires a certain amount of planning ahead so that I don’t end up with a humungous pile of books to read while ensuring I am never without a new book to read.  Anyway, enough of the moaning, as the Long list for the Man Booker Prize 2011 has been announced – hurrah!  Although, now I feel the looming of another title to add to the already long list of titles I’ve still to read…

On starting ‘Last Orders’ I had an uneasy sense of déjà-vu; mature characters in a pub with flashbacks to their lives, ‘The Old Devils’ by Kingsley Amis comes to mind.  And overall this book had a similar premise of ordinary people dealing with ordinary life events, dealing with issues of guilt, uncertainty etc. with a certain amount of drinking in pubs.  The last orders referred to in the title is the request by a recently deceased friend asking that his ashes be scattered from Margate pier and so the majority of the story is based upon the journey that three of his friends and his son make to carry it out including various detours both physical and mental.  Swift adopts a multi-narrative style which switches quite abruptly between the characters and their view of the journey with personal insights into the events along the way and the reminiscences about their lives and of the illness of their friend, that are stimulated.

It is a sensitive story about how life unfolds and the various circumstances which occur, and how different characters respond.  The central characters are well constructed with their back-story filled in during the course of the story with various philosophical points raised as part of the very ordinary, matter of fact way, of daily life.  It wasn’t revolutionary, rather an insightful view on the reflections and memories that often surface around life events such as death through the eyes of ordinary people which left me feeling on the whole more positive than after reading the antics of ‘The Old Devils’.