The Light of Day - Hardcover

Swift, Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375415491 ISBN 13: 9780375415494

Publisher: Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

The Light of Day combines a powerful love story and a narrative of intense suspense into a brilliant and tender novel about what drives people to extremes of emotion. As in his Booker-winning novel Last Orders, Swift transforms ordinary lives through extraordinary storytelling.

This new novel from Graham Swift -- his first since the Booker Prize-winning Last Orders -- is the work of a master storyteller. The Light of Day is a luminous and gripping tale of love, murder and redemption.

George Webb is a divorced ex-policeman turned private investigator, a man whose prospects seemed in ruins not so long ago. Following the course of a single, dazzling day in George’s life, the novel illuminates not only his past but his now all-consuming relationship with a former client.

Intimate and intricate in its evocation of daily existence, The Light of Day achieves a singular intensity and almost unbearable suspense. Tender and humorous in its depiction of life’s surface, Swift explores the depths and extremities of what lies within us and how, for better or worse, it’s never too late to discover what they are.

Excerpt from The Light of Day
Two years ago and a little more. October still, but a day like today, blue and clear and crisp. Rita opened my door and said, “Mrs. Nash.”

I was already on my feet, buttoning my jacket. Most of them have no comparisons to go on -- it’s their first time. It must feel like coming to a doctor. They expected something shabbier, seedier, more shaming. The tidy atmosphere, Rita’s doing, surprises and reassures them. And the vase of flowers.

White chrysanthemums, I recall.

“Mrs. Nash, please have a seat.”

I could be some high-street solicitor. A fountain-pen in my fingers. Doctor, solicitor -- marriage guidance counsellor. You have to be a bit of all three.

The usual look of plucked-up courage, swallowed-back hesitation, of being somewhere they’d rather not be.

“My husband is seeing another woman.”

About this title

Review

In The Light of Day, Booker Prize-winning author Graham Swift takes readers into the mind of an ex-cop turned private investigator, who mulls over his relationship with a former client jailed for murdering her husband. In classic noir fashion, Webb has fallen for his client and anxiously awaits her release. Moreover, Webb had been called in to track the husband's affair, and Webb's role in the crime remains dubious. Swift's novel is somewhat in the vein of stream-of-consciousness style; Webb's thoughts are described, as they take place throughout a single day, in no particular order and without adhering to any strict plot structure. The novel's strength is indeed its structure: it is based not on chronology but as if on a sort of emotional resonance, with Webb's thoughts and preoccupations providing the novel with a depth not normally found in traditional detective novels. As an example, Swift writes of Webb's recollection of tailing the husband, after he had ended the affair and put his ex-lover on a plane:

He headed back towards the car park. In his shoes what would I have done? Found some spot that looked out on the runways? Pressed my nose against cold glass? All those taxiing lights. All those trundling planes, the people inside them like mere possibilities. At night it's hard to follow....

Webb is a fallible gumshoe who doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, but, thanks to Swift's deft prose, has the range of his emotions revealed as he looks toward the future and contemplates his past actions in The Light of Day. --Michael Ferch

From the Back Cover

Praise for Last Orders:

“Graham Swift is a purely wonderful writer, and Last Orders, full of gravity and affection and stylistic brilliance, proves it precisely.” -- Richard Ford

“An amazing novel . . . A truly virtuoso performance . . . A metaphor of the journey we all take.” -- Ann Beattie

“This is Graham Swift’s finest work to date: beautifully written, gentle, funny, truthful, touching and profound.” -- Salman Rushdie

“A profound, intricately stratified novel full of life, love lost and love enduring.” -- The Globe and Mail

“Resonant, distinct, irresistible . . . both convincing and extraordinarily intimate.” -- Washington Post Book World

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0375415491
• ISBN 13: 9780375415494
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336