Graham Swift FRSL (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature) was born
in 1949 in London, England. He was educated at Cambridge, and later the
University of York.
One of his most important works is Waterland
(1992), which was adapted as a film, starring Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke,
directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal (father of the actor Jake Gyllenhaal and of the
actress Maggie Gyllenhaal). It’s the
story about a teacher in a secondary school, and it’s situated in the Fens, a
marshy region in the east of England. The teacher, a tormented person because
he feels guilty of a sad incident, teaches history and mixes his lessons with
the history of his family.
Another novel that has also adapted as a film is Last
Orders (1996), starring Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and Hellen Mirren. It’s
about a group of friends who have to scatter the ashes of a deceased friend in the
sea. The story goes backwards and forwards, this way remembering the old days
of their dead friend. The novel got the Booker Prize in 1996 and this was a
cause of controversy because of its similarities with the novel As I lay
Dying, by Faulkner. The title of Swift novel alludes to the will of a
defunct and also to the phrase said by the bartenders at 22:55 to prompt the
patrons to order one last drink, because at 23:00 the pub will be closed.
He wrote several novels more, and also two collections
of short stories: Learning to Swim and England and Other Stories.
Swift is more an English than a world writer, because
he writes mostly about English subjects and situates his stories in British
soil. The events (murder, adultery…) of his novels are treated with decorum, in
an almost puritanic fashion. We can use the saying “Still waters run deep” for
his narratives: at first sight all is calm, but the tragedy is underneath. His
characters are “typical British”, phlegmatic people.
Technically, Swift does not innovate. His novels are mostly
conventional. And that means he is understandable to everyone. But his novels
are full of mystery: you don’t know the reasons why the people act and react, and
these reasons will be revealed only gradually. In this case, sometimes you
think that the author is playing with you: if he knows the solution, why doesn’t
he tell us about it from the beginning?
About him:
He went to live in Greece for a year with the purpose
of becoming a writer, and he went back to England with a horrid (according to
him) manuscript.
He was influenced by Isaac Babel when he was younger,
and kept a photograph of the Russian writer on his desk.
About himself:
“I believe it would be a bad day for a writer if he
could say, “I know exactly what I'm doing”.
“I hope my imagination will always surprise and
stretch me and take me along unsuspected paths.”
“When you're reading a book, you're on a little island.”
About England and Other Stories
“All these stories are bits of England, but they are
bits of different Englands.”
His short stories are an affectionate chronicle of
everyday lives.
A calculated ordinariness unites the protagonists in
Graham Swift’s new collection of short stories.
In most of the stories, ‘Englishness’ has a less
concrete nature, a bittersweet quality.
This is a sharp, beautiful collection: every story
quick and readable but leaving in the memory a core, a residue, of thoughtfulness.
Some are wicked, some are funny.