Last Orders is a lovely book. It won the Booker Prize in 1996, and was made into a terrific film with Michael Caine as Jack.

It's a deceptively simple story. Four blokes take a day trip to Margate Pier to spread the ashes of their mate, Jack, to the sea. Multiple narrators carry the story through flashbacks to the past and commentary on present events, gradually revealing a complex network of relationships, misunderstandings and betrayals, a fragile web held together by grudging affection and respect.

There's Ray, an insurance clerk and punter: Lucky Ray Johnson who's had an affair with Jack's wife; there's Vic, an undertaker whose business is across the road from Jack's butcher shop and there's Lenny, a fruit-and-veg stallholder whose daughter was 'knocked up' by Vince. Vince is Jack and Amy's foster child, brought up as their own when his family was killed by a doodle-bug in the war. He's a substitute for the child-that-never-was, June, Amy and Jack's grossly retarded daughter. Amy wastes fifty years of her life visiting this child who is incapable of responding to her and she can't forgive Jack because he would rather June were dead.

In an interview, Swift says that his characters are undeducated, inarticulate Londoners who have feelings they can't express. I think it's true they're pretty hopeless at expressing things, and there's a gulf between thought and words, but also (as we thought when The Spouse and I saw the film) it was as much a problem of males being unable to express their feelings as much as a lack of education and language. Amy is best at saying what she thinks and feels...

The narrators are not meant to be trusted. Ray, for example, isn't always honest with himself, and neither is Amy. She uses visiting June in the home as an excuse for her affair with Ray to stop, when the real reason is partly that Vince is coming back from military service in Aden and partly that she's realised that she really does love Jack. Swift not only creates doubt about his characters in this way but also through showing that each of them sees the world through their own perspective and they don't always have all the facts. Vic, for example, sees Ray and Amy together - he never says anything about this to anyone and jumps to the conclusion that the affair has been going on for years.

The damage done by stubbornness is a strong theme in this novel. Amy steadfastly refuses to accept Jack's feelings about June; he stubbornly clings onto the hope that Vince will be the son he never had so that the business can become Dodds & Son. Lenny ruins his daughter's life by insisting that she has an abortion and then when things go awry he stubbornly washes his hands of her. For years and years Ray fails to communicate with his daughter in Australia because he doesn't know how to tell her about crucial events that affect her life. These 'invisible people' in the novel play an important role in the characterisation of the others, and the plot.

What binds the men together is that they are 'drinking partners'. Swift portrays tolerance in male friendship as a kind of moral blindness, as when they conspire 'not to notice' that Ray has been sleeping with his mate's wife. Some people see these characters as male stereotypes - Ray blathering on about mateship in the army and Vince being a petrol-head - but I don't think so. Initial impressions are subverted as different layers and perspectives emerge. Vince, for example, isn't a petrol-head - he's used the army to learn a trade to get into business and achieve social mobility. He's more interested in exploiting the role of the car as a status symbol than he is in performance machines; he might just as easily be selling cashmere or diamonds.

Is Amy a stereotype because we only see her through the men's eyes? It's only her bloody-minded devotion to poor June that casts her so stolidly in the role of 'mother'. She doesn't do much mothering of Vince, not even when he was little. She makes unexpected decisions as the novel reaches its conclusion, and the question of her relationship with Ray remains unresolved at the end. Stereotypes don't lend themselves to ambiguity in this way, and I think Swift's characterisation results in memorable personalities - quite an achievement considering how the reader has to piece things together. Just as the characters do.

I finished reading and journalled this book on 3.5.2003.
Cross posted on The Complete Booker

The butcher, the grocer, the caravan broker.

In discussing a book that speaks so beautifully about memory, it feels appropriate to start with a little nostalgia: I first read this book towards the end of high school. I remember when I read it, I had a real sense of pride that I had arrived in the world of contemporary literary fiction. I wasn’t just proud that I read it, I was proud that I had enjoyed it so much. It speaks to the quality of Mr. Swift’s excellent novel that absent that youthful pride, there’s still a lot to love.

Jack Dodd’s (butcher) has died. His three best friends and his wayward son have to travel from London to carry out his request that his ashes be scattered over the sea at Margate. The novel’s action is made up of Ray’s (one of Jack’s pals) narration of their journey from London to Margate interspersed with everyone’s memories of Jack. It turns out there is high drama in these working-class lives.

Thematically, this book is fascinating. The question of what constitutes a good life well lived is explored with a deep insight and intelligence. Swift uses the contradictions in the shared narration to draw the reader’s attention to the mystery of existence. Employing the post WW2 working class voice to soften the interrogation of such lofty subject matter.

But it takes a great writer to draw these themes out. The interlocking subplot structure is carried off deftly and the novel provides a rare example of a story being improved by an unorthodox narrative style. Threads of a rich biographic tapestry are woven together really pleasingly, and the reader feels the characters’ collective memories very closely.

Perhaps Swift’s best achievement is that he makes the novel feel richly lived. All of our narrators are in their twilight years, and I’ve never read a book that made me appreciate how different the world looks when the future is short, and Swift uses that perspective to draw out genuine wisdom.

On the other hand, the reading experience was less thrilling than it was all those years ago. I believe because – and this is no fault of the novel’s – the motif that behind every ordinary (white) life is a complex web of drama, has become very familiar, no matter how originally it is told. It was never far from my mind that a book like this would, rightly, not win the Booker prize in 2021. And it acted as a milestone that - no matter how hard it is to intuitively understand - 1995 was a quarter of a century ago. But, as Ray, Jack, Vic and Lenny would appreciate, that’s how time works.

I totally understand why this book won the Booker Prize, and I also understand why some people found it boring. There isn’t much action, and frame stories are sometimes hard to follow. I enjoyed it, maybe because it’s from a time when Booker winners were easy to read. The frame story is four men travel from Bermondsey to Margate to scatter the ashes of a fifth who has just succumbed to cancer. In true Chaucerian fashion, the reader is told the stories of the men, their interactions, and their families. They, of course, make a few stops along the way, including Canterbury. Surprise. There’s an interesting chapter in which a character’s story parallels a Beatles song. I liked the book!

Another instance of belatedly catching up with a book after long ago seeing the movie. And as usual there were so many nuances I didn’t pick up from the latter that I discovered in the former.

This tale focuses on the road trip of four working class Londoners, on the wishes of their recently departed friend, driving to Margate on the east coast to dispose of his ashes off a beachside jetty.

Jack Dodds, a lifelong butcher and husband to Amy, was the central figure among the group, which also included Ray ‘Lucky’ Johnson (an insurance clerk and expert punter on the horses), Lenny ‘Gunner’ Tate (a pugnacious fruit and veg peddler), Vic Tucker (a funeral director) and the younger Vince Dodds (a car dealer and adopted son of Jack and Amy.

The story is told through flashbacks through each of the characters - about their disappointments, secrets, resentments, regrets. Only the undertaker Vic appears content with his lot and often ends up being the peacemaker as the feuding friends carry Jack’s ashes from London to the coast.

The ‘Last Orders’ of the title refers to both Jack’s final request, but also to the barman’s ritual closing hour call to drinkers at the pub the friends drink at virtually every day.

A couple of things struck me about the book. One is how generationally-specific this tale is. Jack, Ray, Lenny and Vic all served in the Second World War. As working men of limited means, their service (in the desert in the case of the first three, and at sea for Vic) was their only real experience of the world beyond the narrow confines of their east London neighbourhood. Their horizons are correspondingly restricted and their imaginations limited. Jack muses on being a doctor, Ray daydreams on a life as a jockey, but none of them ever can see a world beyond the narrow patch they landed on after returning from the war.

Vince, by contrast, represents the next generation - the early baby boomers, who grew up in the sixties, and had sights on lifting themselves beyond the confined world of their parents. In Vince’s case, however, his landing point is barely above the older men’s. He gets married too young, is poorly educated and ends up relying on gangsters to make a living as a used car salesman.

Ray, the main narrator, is the most likeable character and you get a sense with him there really was a way out, but he was held back again by a lack of education. Amy’s character (who Ray is sweet on) is central as well. She ends up with Jack after getting pregnant to him as an 18-year-old. Their daughter is severely mentally handicapped and lives her life in an institution, visited dutifully by Amy twice a week but shunned by Jack.

The other thing that struck me is how perfectly cast the movie was, with Michael Caine as Jack, Bob Hoskins as Ray, Tom Courtenay as Vic, Ray Winstone as Vince and Helen Mirren as Amy.

This was a perfect book for Audible as well, with the varied cast of characters narrating each part in first person.

Intensely moving at times - and reminiscent of Faulkner’s ‘As I Lay Dying’ (with the death of the central character triggering a rush of reflections among those surrounding him), ‘Last Orders’ is an elegiac novel about the brief window that is life and the separate realities we all create around the same set of circumstances.

Different lives, different rules!
1996 Booker Prize Winner.
And Worst Booker Winner ever for me.

I would say during 1996 one of the judges named A L Kennedy was very upset with result and she said Booker as 'Crooked pile of non-sense' and after reading this (And also applicable only to this book as per my experience) and I understand her frustration.

This is nothing but just a story of a dead man who last wish to scatter his ashes in sea has been carried out by his friends. I think the voice are indeed very genuinely clubbed in the book but main problem was difficulty in identifying who is who's who and who's who is who ? And in long battalion of characters it went so confusing that after page number 150 I actually checked the Wikipedia page of the book to check the relation between people. I rarely do it.

Still I found it tasteless.

Beautifully written, gently, funny, emotional, touching and profound - Salman Rushdie so this is first I don't agree with Sir Salman Rushdie in anything.

It always amazes me when I pull a gem of a book off my library shelves that has been sitting there for many years. And this time it was the Booker Prize Winner of 1996, Last Orders by Graham Swift. Four men gather at their favorite pub in Bermondsey London, the Coach and Horses, to carry out the last orders of Jack Arthur Dodds as they make preparations to scatter his final remains off the Margate Pier in the countryside of Kent. This group of men have been friends since the Second World War and share a lot of history and memories. So this is largely a lot of memories and flashbacks throughout the years as they are making their way from London to Canterbury in County Kent on their way to Margate. This becomes a time of deep reflection as they remember, not only Jack Dobbs, but all of their lives as they have become intertwined over the years. This was a beautiful book of deep friendship and loyalty that spoke to the journey that we all must eventually make. And though it has taken me some time to pull this book from the shelf, perhaps it was the perfect time.

n  

"It's a question of duty. There's a soldier's duty, a sailor's duty. Heligoland. Jutland. But if you ask me, that ain't as much as orders. Doing your duty in the ordinary course of life is another thing, it's harder."

"It's a question of paying your dues."

n

I can understand why this novel was awarded a booker prize. The plot is around 4 elderly friends fulfilling their friends last wish to have his ashes thrown off Margate pier. During the journey they reminisce in their minds their own lives and the links with Jack the butcher. Set in a working class area of London between 1930s to Jack's death in the 1970s. The relationships, trials and tribulations are set out in short chapters like a jigsaw puzzle. A good read although in places a little confusing with the many characters.

Scene : the smoke room at the Bag of Grandmas, Old Kent Road, Bermondsey, East End, London.

Three novelists are propping up the bar and grouching.

Ian McEwan : My Booker Prize is bigger than yours.

Julian Barnes : No it fucking isn’t, they’re all the same size.

Ian McEwan : No they’re not, they make em bigger if they think it’s a better fucking work of literature.

Graham Swift : No they don’t

Ian McEwan : Yes they do, if Shakespeare has won it his’d be as big as the London Fucking Eye. Salman Rushdie got his hollowed out and installed 15 rooms and a fucking swimming pool in it and he lives in it.

Graham Swift : He lives in his Booker Prize?

Julian Barnes: Mine isn’t as big as that but I did have to get a container lorry to get it back home. I thought they were all like that.

Ian McEwan : By the prickling of my balls something fucking horrible this way comes.

ENTER MARTIN AMIS

Ian McEwan : Hello, fellow novelist. I know an interesting fact about you. You never won the Booker Prize and we fucking did.

Julian Barnes : Also, we’re all over 6 foot 6 and we can hardly see you.

Graham Swift: Is that actually Martin Amis or is it a stain on the rug?

Martin Amis : Fuck off, I could have won the Booker Prize any time I wanted to, it’s so easy, it’s actually too easy, I wouldn’t wipe my arse with a Booker Prize.

Graham Swift: Well cheer up, you got on the short list, didn’t you. Get it? Short list? Short list?

GS, IM and JB laugh heartily.

Martin Amis : Well there’s no need for that. (Snivelling into a filthy handkerchief). And… and… (thinking hard) ---- anyway - I got my name into the title of a novel that won a Booker Prize! Yeah!

Ian McEwan : What was that? Martin Amis Ha Ha Ha?

Graham Swift : No, Martin Amis God He's Little!

Julian Barnes :… Well, Martin, we give up, which one has your name in it?

Martin Amis : The Famished Road! Ha – pretty clever hey?

Graham Swift : Too clever for us Martin. See, that’s why they don’t like you. That’s why they give us the prizes and not you.

Martin Amis : Bawwwww. You're not very nice to me!!

****************************

Well, enough ribaldry. I’m sure the real novelists don’t talk a bit like that. As for Last Orders, I didn’t even want to read it. Somebody left it on my shelf and it has a nice cover. I didn’t like it. It was boring. All these cor blimey working class cockerneys who use every tiresome handmedown wornout circumlocution and saying and turn of phrase – it was TV writing, Eastenders, except that always has several screechy plots going at once to keep you awake which Last Orders frankly didn’t. All those little secrets, a complex symphony of the unsaid, I couldn’t scrape up any enthusiasm. The only interesting aspect was that I found that Last Orders ran into a minor controversy when it came out in 1996 because it’s got the same overall storyline and it’s told in a similar way to As I Lay Dying, the brilliant 1930 William Faulkner novel. Some Booker judge said if only I’da known that at the time I wouldnta voted for it.

But I say don’t vote for it because it’s a drag not because of some notional plagiarism. I say that popular music rips off old songs all the time, sometimes with acknowledgement, sometimes not, and movies get remade, and versions are versioned – Clueless is Emma, for instance –– so authors should be able to do that too and sometimes do quite openly e.g. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley is King Lear – .

We should flay and mock our authors for the right sins not the wrong ones, and dullness is the one unforgivable transgression.

Our time runs faster and faster…

First you count the years, the decades, then suddenly it’s hours and minutes.

We live and our time is slowly petering out. We pass away but to those who knew us we leave memories. And if these memories are good we will be remembered longer.

It evens out, because in one direction there’s what’s ahead and in another there’s the memory, and maybe there’s nothing more or less to it than that, it’s nothing more or less than what you should expect, a good thing between two bad things.

The present and the past are in collision and they are in union… And one day it’s time to pay debts.

Электронная книга подчас означает, что читаешь все, что не приколочено: так в моих руках оказался роман Грэма Свифта. Я пыталась освободиться от липких пут ностальгии и "светлой печали", которыми щедро связывает читателя Бетти Смит, и в итоге попала в яму с тем же самым добром, разве что вырытую не милым ребенком, а унылыми английскими работягами.

В прямом смысле старые друзья собрались, чтобы развеять прах бывшего товарища над морем. У них есть шикарный автомобиль, немного денег и очень много эмоционального багажа.

Понятно, почему книга получила Букер, понятно, почему в фильме по ней сыграл Майкл Кейн, непонятно только, зачем я взялась ее читать.

It will take a lot for there to be a group of characters I care less about. A truly menacing reading experience

رواية بسيطة مخادعة وتحكي قصة اربعة رجال يحملون رماد صديقهم المتوفي معهم اثناء رحلة تجمعهم وخلالها يقوم كل واحد منهم برواية قصته
استخدام بارع للغة في ايصال كل قصة بطريقة شيقة وجذابة ، الكثير من القصص ستروى علاقاتهم الرومانسية مع النساء واخفاقهم في العديد من هذه القصص


انها سهلة القراءة، ولكن يجب عليك قراءة الصفحات ال 50 الأولى بدون توقف وإلا ستصاب بالحيرة حول الكثير من الامور وستضطر إلى إعادة قراءة العمل من جديد
. العلاقات معقدة ومتشابكة ومليئة الخداع وخيبة الأمل

ذكرتني بقصة فيلم من ألف الى باء والذي عرض مؤخرا في مهرجان ابوظبي السينمائي