Swift, Graham Last Orders ISBN 13: 9780330347457

Last Orders - Softcover

9780330347457: Last Orders
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Four men gather in a London pub. They have taken it upon themselves to carry out the last orders of Jack Dodds, master butcher, and deliver his ashes to the sea. As they drive towards the fulfillment of their mission, their errand becomes an extraordinary journey into their collective and individual pasts. Braiding these men's voices, and that of Jack's widow, into a choir of sorrow and resentment, passion and regret, Swift creates a testament to a changing England and to enduring mortality.
"Swift has involved us in real, lived lives...Quietly, but with conviction, he seeks to affirm the values of decency, loyalty, love."--New York Review of Books
"A beautiful book...a novel that speaks profoundly of human need and tenderness. Even the most cynical will be warmed by it."--San Francisco Chronicle

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Review:
From the author of Waterland and Ever After, Last Orders is a quiet but dazzling novel about a group of men, friends since the Second World War, whose lives revolve around work, family, the racetrack, and their favorite pub. When one of them dies, the survivors drive his ashes from London to a seaside town where they will be scattered, compelling them to take stock in who they are today, who they were before, and the shifting relationships in between. Both funny and moving, this won the Booker Prize in 1996.
About the Author:
Graham Swift is the author of five other novels, including the acclaimed Waterland, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Award. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in London.

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  • PublisherNY: KNOPF. 1996
  • Publication date1996
  • ISBN 10 0330347454
  • ISBN 13 9780330347457
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages304
  • Rating

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Graham SWIFT [signed
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, NY (1996)
ISBN 10: 0330347454 ISBN 13: 9780330347457
New Soft cover First Edition Signed Quantity: 1
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Book Description Soft cover. Condition: New. 1st Edition. Signed, limited advance reader's copy in a publishers slipcase. Last Orders is a captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request-- namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies-- insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does-- or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms-- including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism-- with the ring to it of the honest, human, and true. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # va11

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Swift, Graham
Published by NY: KNOPF. 1996 (1996)
ISBN 10: 0330347454 ISBN 13: 9780330347457
New Soft cover First Edition Signed Quantity: 1
Seller:
Flash Books
(Audubon, NJ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Soft cover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. RARE "Signed" Presentation Edition of the 1st American Uncorrected Page Proofs. 1996 Booker Prize Winner. New copy. Never read. Book comes in a Slip Case. Slip case is shrink wrapped. Shrink wrap has never been opened. Book and Slip Case are PERFECT. COLLECTOR'S cOPY. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 000995

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