Half a Loaf, by Graham Swift

Half a Loaf, by Glòria Torner

The story has four parts:

PART I. PRESENTATION

The first words we read, “half a loaf”, are the repetition of the title and also the synthesis of all the story.

The narrator is remembering the last lovely night he spent with his girlfriend, called Tanya, and he is imagining how she is returning home alone, as many times, after making love with him. He is thinking that everybody is looking how beautiful his lover is while she is walking along the street and descending to the Tube. He is waiting for the next time he will reach out and touch Tanya.

After that, he describes how important has been for him in his life the religious influence of his strict father, who was a churchman, and also the drastic opinions of her mother wishing him happiness, although she used to say: “all good things must end”.  

PART II. ERIC, THE OSTEOPATH

Now, we know that the narrator, called Eric, is a widower osteopath who has lost his wife, Anthea, three years ago. He describes how sad he felt when his wife died, until he fell into a deep depression. At that time, he only thought about ending his life and thus being with his dead wife.

PART III. TANYA, THE PATIENT

While he was suffering this mental breakdown, he met a new patient, Tanya, a young woman, twenty-six years old. He quickly cured her of a lower back problem and began a love affair with her. Following the story, Eric asked her to have dinner with him and they began a relationship spending since then a night together every week. He sought solace in the company of Tanya, all the while imagining and reconnecting with his dead wife, who encourages him saying “go on”. He can’t disconnect himself from his past.

But Eric has a presentiment: he thinks this love affair will end soon.

Part IV.  NATHAN, THE BOYFRIEND

Following the story, two months later, we clearly notice that Tanya has a regular boyfriend, Nathan. Eric, who isn’t jealous, shares her with her boyfriend. Now, he tries to understand if it’s possible to share his lover with Nathan and not to lose her, although he believes that there will come a time when this love affair will be quite impossible, a real obstacle, like “a stone”. The last words of the story imply that there will not be another night together.

SOME REMARKS

This story is quite different from the others we have read because it’s the first story we read only about love with sensual and sexual feelings.

The story doesn’t follow any linear order from the beginning to the end because Eric, the narrator, wants to mix his memories, thoughts and desires together, until reaching a possible, perhaps uncertain, end.

After reading this sad and conformist story, I finish my work with three questions:

Must he accept less than he wanted? Do you think he wants to share his lover? Or he prefers to finish his affair?

QUESTIONS

-What is the meaning of the title? Is there a pun with the word “loaf”?

-“All good things come to an end”. According to your opinion, is this saying true for everything?

-Talk about the narrator: family, job…

-Why do you think the narrator tells us about his father being a churchman?

-“Certain female patients didn’t exactly go to see him for their back problems”: do you think it’s true?

-Describe his love for Tanya.

-Tanya’s decision to bed with him, could be a paraphilia? (Perhaps she was attracted by crying men)

-What you invite someone, what is it best: to go where you like, or to go where you think the other person will like?

-Is there only a kind of love (sexual, not friendship or family love)? How many kinds of love are there? Does love change along the centuries? For example: jealousy. A true love, does it have to be jealous?

Does Tanya love him, or she feels pity? What do you know about the novel Beware of pity, by Stefan Zweig?

-What can you say about Zeppo’s?

-What do you think about Tanya’s morality (she has a boyfriend and gets laid with the narrator)? Have you seen the French film À l’abordage?

-“The young are a mystery, a different species”. What sense is this true in?

-Men “might eventually resort to prostitutes”. Is this a cliché for men? And what about women?

-How do you think their relationship will end?

-What is the stone at the end of the story?

 

VOCABULARY

bay window, ammunition, dwell, unaware, swamp, nonchalantly, on tap, get-out card, balm, rehearsing, arouse, breakdown, sheer, vouched, NHS, blubbering, spectacle, unclad, delude, fee, aegis, doomed, allowance, stray, unprompted, period, crust, bereft, lack, egging me on