It is the story of Bill Unwin, a man haunted by the death of his beautify wife and a survivor himself. His depiction of a fragile caste clinging to traditions that define their sense of noblesse oblige while struggling to bear the era’s crushing burden of “accumulated loss and grief” is poignant and moving-as is his intimation of a brilliant personal destiny that rises from the ashes of a tragically bygone social order. Dazzling in its structure and shattering in its emotional force, Graham Swift’s Ever After spans two centuries and settings from the adulterous bedrooms of postwar Paris to the contemporary entanglements in the groves of academe. The story lingers on the immediate aftermath of Jane and Paul’s tryst and Swift ( England and Other Stories) invests its every detail-the order in which Paul hastily dons formal attire to lunch with his fiancé and their families, the casualness with which Jane explores his estate home in the nude-with gravity and symbolic weight. No one can anticipate that the day will end abruptly with a devastating tragedy-and, for Jane, an epiphany that marks the start of a future as rich and rewarding as it is unforeseen. Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of ten novels, two collections of short stories, including the highly acclaimed England and Other Stories, and of Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. On the titular day-a Sunday before Easter that the aristocracy traditionally give their help off to visit their families-Jane bikes to neighboring Upleigh for a final fling with Paul Sheringham, her wealthy lover for the past five years, who is soon to marry into another blue blood family. He has made no public pronouncements on the war in. Its events unfold from the viewpoint of Jane Fairchild, a 22-year-old maid at the Berkshire estate Beechwood. Sat 18.44 EDT F or an author of his critical reputation and commercial success, the novelist Graham Swift is unfashionably discreet.
Set in 1924, in an England still reeling from the loss of young men to the Great War, this elegiac tale offers a haunting portrait of lives in a world in transition.
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