Product Description

This novel follows four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, who meet to carry out his last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15674 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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.

From the Publisher
Poignant and compassionate exploration of ordinary lives
Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish, to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them. On the surface the tale of a simple if increasingly bizarre day's outing, Last Orders is Graham Swift's most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives. "Triumphant...a surpassing testament to Swift's vibrant and powerful gifts" The Times; "His finest book to date; emotionally charged and technically superb...Last Orders is about how we live and how we die and our struggle to make abiding connections between the two" Times Literary Supplement; "This is Graham Swift's finest work to date: beautifully written, gentle, funny, truthful, touching and profound" Salman Rushdie; "Tragic, comic and wonderfully compassionate" Daily Mail

Customer Reviews

A touching tale of the lives of ordinary Londoners.
This was the first title I have read by Graham Swift, but has inspired me to seek out all his other titles. It is a tale of four friends, their intertwined lives and loves, spread over a fifty year period commencing in World War Two. As with all the best books, Last Orders has realistic and human characters in whom readers will take a genuine interest.

The story is ostensibly based around a journey undertaken by three of the men (with a friend) to scatter the the fourth original member's ashes in the sea at Margate. Although similar to Faulkner's 1930 "As I Lay Dying", Swift's novel is none the less a great book in its own right.

If you like novels with strong characterisation and a genuine, touching story, I strongly commend "Last Orders" to you.

More than just a simple story
This is more than just a simple tale of a group of friends taking their friend's ashes to the sea-side. I found it so poignant and moving that I could hardly bear to read the last scene. It's about the big issues in life and how chance can change your whole destiny. It's also about regret and lost opportunities, love and, obviously, death. Each character is beautifully drawn. Ray, the 'lucky' gambler is a 'litte ray of sunshine', Vic, the undertaker, the only one not afraid of death, is the 'Victor' - even the characters' names mean something. It's probably the sort of book you need to read more than once to fully appreciate, but it well deserved the Booker prize and I would recommend it to anyone (as long as you're not expecting to laugh!)

Great read, Swift's best
The bad news first: there is enough foundation to point out misogynist traits in Swift's work, but Waterland bothered me much more in this respect than Last Orders. In the latter, there is only Kath, who seems to have resorted to prostitution after her father pressed her to seduce potential buyers for his cars. All the other women are distinctly drawn and have their own minds. Amy, for instance, explicitly decides not to accompany the four blokes to Margate. It's the male characters in the book who have problems with women, not so much Swift this time.
And look how carefully built up the novel is. I, for one, found the frequent changes of point of view one of the novel's strongest points, and not at all distracting. I don't know the first thing about south London or Cockney, but it all rang true for me. Besides, I found it spellbinding to eavesdrop on these working-class men's internal monologues. Last Orders is probably no match for Shakespeare's Hamlet, but both texts feature definitely a lot about death and dying that is worth being told.