Wish You Were Here

By Graham Swift

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders comes an incredibly moving and accomplished new novel. A Vintage Canada trade paperback original.
 
On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton, former Devon farmer and now the proprietor of a seaside caravan park, receives the news that his soldier brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq. For Jack and his wife, Ellie, this will have a potentially catastrophic impact. For Jack in particular it means a crucial journey--to receive his brother's remains, but also into his own most secret, troubling memories and into the land of his and Ellie's past. Wish You Were Here is both a gripping account of things that touch and test our human core and a resonant novel about a changing England. Rich with a sense of the intimate and the local, it is also, inescapably, about a wider, afflicted world. Moving towards an almost unbearably tense climax, it allows us to feel the stuff of headlines--the return of a dead soldier from a foreign war--as heart-wrenching personal truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307360120

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 Wish You Were Here

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“His mother is dead, yet she has never not been, in theory, at his shoulder. He wants her not to have known and suffered or even witnessed all the things that followed her death. Including all this now. But that would be like wishing her dead. Merely dead.”This novel centres on a middle-aged couple Jack and Ellie Luxton. Both are in their late thirties and grew up the children of neighbouring north Devon farmers and are the last of their respective families. They are childhood sweethearts who now own and manage a caravan park on the Isle of White. Jack used to live on Jebb Farm with his parents, Michael and Vera, and his younger brother Tom, who eventually runs off to join the Army. As the book opens he is sat at an upstairs window on a stormy day with a shotgun at his side ruminating on his past. Instead of milking cows, he is “the soft-living proprietor” looking after holiday-makers. Instead of struggling to make ends meet they are now living a comfortable life even enjoying Caribbean holidays in the off season but he is still haunted by the memories of cow carcasses being burnt during the mad-cow disease (BSE) outbreak. A memory that is brought vividly back to him when he watches images of cows again being burnt during a foot and mouth outbreak.A week before the day on which the book is set Jack has been informed that his brother Tom has been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq and that his body will shortly be repatriated forcing him to confront long buried memories.Most of the book is told through the thoughts of Jack although Ellie is by no means forgotten whilst the thoughts of a few other minor characters including his brother, Tom, figure briefly. Jack is a thoughtful man who has to a certain extent lived a sheltered life whereas Ellie is much more worldly wise. Most of Jack’s memories tend to centre on the decline of Jebb Farm, in particular after the death of his mother by natural causes, “the ruin that had been creeping up on them… since Vera Luxton had died” but also centres on the stories about Fred and George Luxton, two brothers who died on the same day at the Somme.This is the story of one couple but it is also chronicles the tale of declining English small scale farming communities struggling to keep their farms afloat and uncertain as to what to do when their efforts fail.This is a really well written novel that tells an affecting tale. The realities of rural life are wonderfully depicted. It centres on the struggles not purely against nature but also within families. The emphasis is on tradition and community but also features abandonment by both dead and deserting mothers, as well as domineering, remote fathers. However, this is not all doom and gloom, there are also smatterings of humour to help lighten the mood. The book is deliberately not told in chronological order, however, if I have one complaint with it, it is that we are informed far too early in the novel that Jack is sat looking out the window awaiting the return of Ellie with a shotgun at his side struggling against madness. We have no idea as to what has caused this. By the time that Ellie does return home some of the effect is lost. I had almost stopped caring why Jack has got a loaded gun next to him never really believing that he would use it whatever the provocation. Swift is obviously a master of his trade and is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors but overall I felt that this one just missed the mark.

[teresa1953_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A thoroughly good read this one!We step in to the life of Jack Luxton, a caravan park owner, living on the Isle of Wight with his wife Ellie. He has just received a letter from the Ministry of Defence, to inform him that his younger brother Tom has been killed whilst on active duty with the Army in Iraq. Jack has not seen or heard from his brother since he fled from the family home on his 18th birthday more than a decade ago. The letter has been delayed due to the fact it has been redirected from that previous home.....a working farm in Devon. Jack has already lost his Mother at a relatively young age and his Father committed suicide. Naturally enough, Jack has misgivings about his brother's repatriation and funeral. His thoughts turn to the past and the author skillfully brings this to life, weaving in the tales of not only Jack, but his brother and Father, Michael. I loved the cameos of other related characters such as Ellie, who was Jack's sweetheart from childhood, and even the army officer who comes to pay his respects at their remote Isle of Wight home.Jack and Ellie's lives are relatively comfortable. They made a great deal of money on the sale of the Luxton farmhouse and surrounding land. Not to mention the sale of Ellie's father's farm when he dies about a year after Michael. The caravan park is flourishing and they make enough to be able to holiday in the Caribbean each winter. Indeed, that is where they are due to be going when the bombshell of Tom's death is dropped. Jack feels it is now impossible to go St Lucia and Ellie is less than pleased. In a fit of pique, she refuses to accompany Jack to the funeral on the mainland.So Jack makes the difficult journey alone and we..the reader..are with him every painful step of the way. There is a gem of a portrait about the 2 funeral workers who transport Tom's body from the airport to the Devon church which Jack has chosen for his burial. Also about the couple who bought Jebb Farm to turn it into a summer retreat.Graham Swift is Booker Prize winner (Last Orders, 1996) and I found his writing really expressive and engaging.I highly recommend this novel and hope it will be a great success.This book was made available to me, by the publisher, for an honest review.

[nocto_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this - very possibly the best book I've read this year. All the reviews I've seen seem to concentrate on it being a story based around the return home of the body of a soldier from Iraq. However I don't think that's really the centre of the story. It's certainly a story with a lot to do with death, dying and legacies left behind, but the return of a soldier is only one part of it and not to my mind the most important part. He's just part of the story of the end of a Devon farming family. It's a really deep read giving you plenty to think about and although there were a couple of places where I thought it went rather off track - possibly to prevent it from being too dark a read - it was still the most interesting book I've read in ages. I was rather surprised to find it's not on this year Booker Prize longlist, so I'm hoping there are some really *really* good books on the list!

[mouldywarp_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The usual superb Swift!

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think this was beautifully written, as always with Graham Swift, but I had to give up on it.. This is not a negative reflection on the book but a concession to my own tendency towards deep depression. I just couldn't risk going on any further with it. The despair just seemed too great.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

[Wish you were here], [[Graham Swift]]'s latest novel, is about a moment of madness, as the first sentence testifies, "there is no end to madness (..) once it takes hold" (p.1). The action described in the story, from Jack looking out of the bedroom window, as the November "rain stings the glass" (on page 5) till the last page, where Jack holds up the umbrella for his wife, "the rain beating a tattoo against it" (on page 353) covers only about an hour, perhaps even less. The rest of the book are flash backs, and descriptions of Jack's life and the events of the past few years and past few days, especially the 'homecoming' of his younger brother, Tom.The opening of the book moves very slowly, and within the first fifty pages, the reader has already counted six deaths in the family. The novel ponders heavily on death and destruction; casualties of war, suicide, and disease, BSE taking a prominent place. Family members, cattle, his dog, the ancestral home, -- all gone. Amidst all that loss, Jack only has his wife, Ellie, whom he can barely miss out of eye sight, even on a short errand, always in his mind, wish you were here, a wish, which acts like an invocation.[Wish you were here] is an elegant exploration of a that contemporary problem, often featured in the news media as the family tragedy.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Graham Swift has become one of my favourite authors. Like most of his books, this one is beautifully written with deep portrayals of his characters. It also reveals information slowly, often not sequentially. It can be a bit frustrating, but the work the reader invests in following the thoughts and actions of the characters always pays off.This is a story about roots: your family, your home, your way of life. All of which change for the main character, Jack Luxton. The story catches him, as the opening sentence says, at the moment when madness takes hold of him. He's recently learned of the death of his soldier brother, Tom, in Iraq, a brother he hasn't seen for over a decade; his last surviving relative. Jack is caught in memories of his parents, his former life as a farmer, the early days of his relationship with his wife. We watch him struggle to deal with his past without destroying his present. A very moving story.

[adrianburke_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I got so bogged down in the ruminative structure of this novel and at the same time found I cared little about any of its characters. I didn’t really believe the farm setting and thought the repeated trope of cow diseases was factitous. The last quarter I read only first sentences of paragraphs and felt I didn’t lose a lot. Is this just a bulked up short story. Is that what Swift does - works up what are basically short stories? A short story cannot stretch to nearly 400 pages.

[davidroche_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have just finished reading Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift (Scribner). One of our greatest writers at the peak of his powers, weaving the tension from a patchwork of relationships and recollections.

[samsattler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wish You Were Here, the latest from Graham Swift, is one of those novels that take place largely inside the heads of its main characters – when there is much of what might be called “action,” it is usually part of the book’s alternating flashbacks recounting Luxton family history. Swift, as usual, tells his story in methodical fashion, but he constructs here a first-rate drama, layer-by-layer, that will reward patient readers with its ultimate impact. The novel is told from Jack Luxton’s point-of-view. Jack and his wife run a tourist campsite on the Isle of Wight, but the couple grew up on adjoining farms in a remote part of the English countryside, and their current lifestyle is nothing like the one they left behind. The couple has much in common, things that should help keep them together but, as Wish You Were Here begins, Ellie is nowhere to be found and Jack stands gazing out his bedroom window, loaded shotgun on the bed behind him, expectantly awaiting her return. What he plans to use the shotgun for is not at all clear at this point, and learning what placed him in that position will require a bit of patience, but it is well worth the effort involved.Jack Luxton, it seems, has witnessed the absolute dismantling of his world and, he is not at all certain that the life with which he replaced his old one makes for all that good a swap. Growing up on a small dairy farm is not an easy life for a boy, but Jack, his brother, and his parents managed to cope well for most of his boyhood. Despite the demands of dairy farming (cows have to be milked every morning and they are not happy about waiting for it to happen), Jack can easily picture living on the farm for the rest of his life. The property, after all, has been in his family for generations and, as the eldest son, he feels the obligation to keep it that way. Regrettably, this is not to be.Jack, Ellie, and their families are relatively simple people; their whole lifestyle tends to make them more insular than those that grow up in more urban areas, but that does not mean they do not feel emotions strongly. The problem is that they do not, at least in this story, seem to be able to express to each other what they are feeling, part of the reason that Jack ends up with a loaded shotgun on his bed. Much of the satisfaction of reading a Graham Swift novel comes from the way that he describes what seems like an unimportant fact or incident only to reveal later, little piece by little piece, what it really means and why it happened. It is a little like looking at the picture on a jigsaw puzzle’s box and then putting all the pieces in place – only then, is the impact of the whole picture felt.

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

This was a fabulous read! It had so many of the topics that light me up, like death, pondering death and suicide, rural life and isolation, and some seriously troubled family dynamics. Plus with a Swift novel, you get great writing, emotion, and with this one, a style that shifted constantly in time without ever losing or confusing me as a reader. I could tell you about the players and the action, but I think it's best to go into the reading experience of this book — expecting a slightly disturbing, but honestly felt story by a writer who is so very talented.