Ever After

By Graham Swift

Dazzling in its structure and shattering in its emotional force, Graham Swift's Ever After spans two centuries and settings from the adulterous bedrooms of postwar Paris to the contemporary entanglements in the groves of academe. It is the story of Bill Unwin, a man haunted by the death of his beautify wife and a survivor himself of a recent brush with mortality. And although it touches on Darwin and dinosaurs, bees and bridge builders, the true subject of Ever After is nothing less than the eternal question, "Why should things matter?"

"Ever After is explicitly concerned with historical investigation, love, death, family affairs.... It moves quickly, and it vibrates with feeling and thought."--Wall Street Journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307829832

Graham Swift

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eleven novels, two collections of short stories, including the highly acclaimed England and Other Stories, and of Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. His most recent novel, Mothering Sunday, became an international bestseller and won The Hawthornden Prize for best work of imaginative literature. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and with Last Orders the Booker Prize. Both novels were made into films. His work has appeared in over thirty languages.

Reviews for Ever After

[jphamilton-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found many parts of this novel extremely moving—especially as I’m always drawn to stories of dying spouses—but in the end I found the combination of the contemporary story with the one from the Victorian era lacking. Swift can write like a dream, many times his writing feeling so heartfelt and personal that it feels as if you reading a personal letter from the man. The parts from the 1800s became sections that I would find myself reading faster and faster as I wanted to get back to his writing of the current storyline, and Ruth. My copy of the book is heavily porcupined with the Post-its that I use to mark memorable lines and passages, so there was much that impressed me here, it was just a disconnect with his two story theme.