A novel that presses the reader to understand the complexities our actions and our history have on others, and how they resonate through generations. Our main character, Bill Unwin, after a failed attempt to take his own life, his wife's death and that of his step-father, sets down in writing what he has become as a result of these events; and just as importantly for him, an attempt to discover his former self. He has imagined himself as Hamlet - outwardly a happy man, still lingering in the "fads of adolescence"; but when "the lights go out", the dark side of the prince reveals itself in him.
I love Graham Swift. He's got a grip on so many things: history, mortality, faith and the lack of it, the joy of love and its inevitable removal, and I think, the importance of creating a personal record to connect ourselves, and those who follow, with why it is that things matter.
Of Graham Swift's novels that I have read, that sense of a quest for a deeper understanding of human motivation in his characters is a special quality that marks him as a lovable writer, worthy of respect and praise.

I found many parts of this novel extremely moving—especially as I’m always drawn to stories of dying spouses—but in the end I found the combination of the contemporary story with the one from the Victorian era lacking. Swift can write like a dream, many times his writing feeling so heartfelt and personal that it feels as if you reading a personal letter from the man. The parts from the 1800s became sections that I would find myself reading faster and faster as I wanted to get back to his writing of the current storyline, and Ruth.
My copy of the book is heavily porcupined with the Post-its that I use to mark memorable lines and passages, so there was much that impressed me here, it was just a disconnect with his two story theme. ( )

A gentle novel that rambles along a journey that doesn't really go anywhere, but is enjoyable enough as Swift writes very well. ( )

http://steelbrassnwood.livejournal.com/103717.html ( )