Product Description
296 pages. Book is in Very good condition throughout. Four Men Meet To Carry Out A Friend's Last Wishes To Have His Ashes Scattered Out To Sea. His Widow Declines To Join Them.
Amazon 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 favourite 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 of 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.
Reviews:
Peter J (United Kingdom) (2013/12/21): At first glance this seems such a simple tale, a man's dying wish is to have his ashes thrown into the sea of Margate pier and four drinking mates undertake this task making a few stops along the way but there is much more to it than that. Firstly all the characters are working class, we have Vic an undertaker, Ray an insurance broker and horse racing gambler, Lenny a fruit and veg man, Vince a second hand car salesman and of course the deceased Jack Dodds, a Master Butcher. Each man along with the widow Amy narrates part of the story each unraveling a little of theirs' and Jack's past. We get life and death,childhood and parenthood, loyalty and deception,work,regret and lost opportunities,in fact all the ingredients that makes up everyday life.
Initially I found the constant skipping from one narrator to another and from the past to the present a little baffling but soon got the hang of it and even began to enjoy these constant switches of emphasis. Despite the gloomy subject matter there was also a certain amount of humour which lightened the mood at times. I also enjoyed the author's writing style feeling that he had a good grasp and insight into his characters, the most poignant for me was strangely the one who didn't go, the widow. Instead she has her own journey to make, to visit and tell her mentally retarded daughter June that Jack has died, a daughter whom Jack has shunned practically all her life but whom it could be argued that in his choice of final resting place he finally acknowledges in death what he could not face in life.
However, for me, the final third of the book rather lets it down overall. This switches predominantly between the hospital ward and the home where June has lived most of her life, coupled with the meandering nature of the journey to Margate meant I felt that the tale got somewhat bogged down at times. That said I still enjoyed the book as a whole and will certainly look out for some of Swift's other works but a worthy winner of the Booker Prize? I'm not so sure.
