Graham Swift’s new novel, Wish You Were Here, has been met with mixed reviews. His literary credentials are never in question. But does his latest offering show him at his best?
Writing in the latest issue of the Spectator, Anthony Cummins terms this a ‘state of the
nation novel’, but one which fails to capture the nation. ‘Wish You Were Here seems more fatalistic than political: a howl not an argument.’ There are structural difficulties too: Swift’s
use of multiple narrators dilutes the already thin central character. Also, Swift’s attempt to link agriculture and war is too neat, inspiring some rather strained metaphors about those who die as
cattle. But, Swift is very gifted and there are ‘blurry passages of brilliant writing’.
Jane Shilling, in the Telegraph, admits Swift is a ‘meticulous
craftsman’ and that there is ‘elegance’ in the novel’s ‘construction’. But it is the subject matter that irks her: ‘Farmers are not notoriously voluble,
and Jack Luxton’s exposition of the traumas of his past unfolds in the affectless monotone of extreme trauma’. So, though the ‘cumulative effect is…quite moving’,
there are ‘lengthy passages where some frivolous-minded readers may catch a faint whiff of the lurid agricultural misfortunes of Cold Comfort Farm.’
In the Observer, Benjamin Markovits praises Swift for his ‘terrific
set-pieces’ and contrasts the work with Swift’s previous novel, Last Orders. For Markovits, the latter captures the ‘original banter of a certain class of people’
whereas Wish You Were Here contains ‘very little banter’ and, perhaps consequently, is also ‘less funny, and a little less vivid, too.’ Jack too is ‘relentlessly
limited’ and the plot is shaky with the ‘marital spat’ seeming ‘…more like a device than a fight.’
Susan Elkin, in The Independent on Sunday, also praises
the set-piece events, the repatriation scene being ‘beautifully evoked and totally convincing’. This is backed up by the ‘perceptively plausible’ characterization. However,
the third-person style grates (Benjamin Markovits voices a similar complaint at the end of his piece): ‘It is his first novel written in the third person, and he is not (yet?) comfortable
with it.’ She also laments the lack of rigorous editing, arguing that the novel ‘would have been even better’ if a few of the ‘digressions’ had been trimmed.
Finally, outside the parameters of Fleet Street, opinion has been similarly mixed. Amazon reviewer P.G.
Harris applauds the novel as ‘a truly excellent piece of writing’ though wonders if Swift is not ‘laying the misery on a bit thick’. Bacchus notes an ‘elegiac quality’ to the work
though admits that the subject matter often leads to ‘grim reading’. Shennagh Pugh, meanwhile, finds ‘the pace achingly slow’ in
addition to the ‘whole thing’ being ‘too constructed’.
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