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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"To love is to be ready to lose, it's not to have, to keep.", February 2, 2005
This review is from: The Light of Day: A Novel (Paperback)
Initially resembling an old-fashioned, hard-boiled detective story, this novel by Graham Swift becomes, as the perspective widens, an investigation of love, man's need for love, and the sacrifices we are all willing to make for love. Private detective George Webb allows the reader to "tag along" during one day of his life in 1997, talking to his readers about aspects of his life as they impinge randomly on his consciousness. Description is not a big part of George's life, and it takes the reader some time to understand all his references in this lengthy interior monologue. We don't know, at first, why Nov. 20 is a significant date to him or where he goes every other Thursday, nor do we know about his personal relationships with the women introduced at the beginning, or the reason he's buying flowers, or why he's had a woman's handbag in his possession for two years.
As George's recollections, memories, and observations expand, however, we gradually come to know him and his past, including his relationship with his father, his own broken marriage and the circumstances surrounding it, his alienated daughter, his womanizing, the scandal which has resulted in his leaving the police force, and his decision to specialize in "matrimonial work." We learn, too, that George's client, Mrs. Nash, is now in jail, the reasons for this unfolding even more gradually, as we come to know her, her husband Bob, and the privileged life they've led. Always, however, our opinions of these characters and their relationships are colored by George's point of view, and we, as objective observers, learn as much about them from what George does not say as we do by what he does say.
All of George's memories are concerned with the vulnerability of people who are in love, as Swift raises questions about whether we choose the people we love, or whether we are chosen by them. Does love just happen? What makes it last? What happens to lovers who are "unchosen"? And can we love too much? Although a mystery story is not usually the framework for such a serious, philosophical analysis of love in all its permutations, Swift manages to make this work through his beautifully wrought character study of George, buffeted every which way by the loves in his life. In the lean, unemphatic prose style he first employed in Last Orders, Graham Swift presents a sensitive investigation of love with all its mysteries and ineffable sadness. Mary Whipple
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, July 9, 2003
Unfortunately, I was far less enamoured of The Light of Day than the four reviewers who have already posted. I love most of Graham Swift's novels: Last Orders, The Sweet Shop Owner, Waterland, etc. I was very excited to purchase and read TLOD. The experience was very disappointing. I wouldn't mind the narrowness of the book's temporal span (essentially, it follows the protagonist's emotions over the course of a single day, although memories and flashbacks reach back many years), were it not for the fact that I find the book's emotional and thematic range similarly limited. By the midway point of the book, Swift had pretty much covered the range of emotions experienced by George and exhausted the character's development. From a thematic and emotional standpoint, the rest of the book was mostly repetition of ground that already had been covered. Also, the pseudo-detective story overlay for the novel wears thin quickly. Any real "suspense" dissipates quickly, leaving the gumshoe-as-metaphor-for-exploration-of-mysteries-of-the-heart concept a fairly intrusive and clunky affectation to drag through the remainder of the book. This may have been a good idea for a long story or short novella, but it doesn't hold up for a whole novel. Frankly, I had to force myself to finish it, which is remarkably different from my experience with other of Swift's novels.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fate Rules, OK?, June 18, 2004
For some reason, a number of reviewers use the term "hard boiled" in their description of this deeply psychological novel. Presumably this is because the protagonist is an ex-policeman who was kicked off the force for "corruption" and is now doing seedy "matrimonial" detective work. And other familiar "hard boiled" types on hand as well: the efficient secretary who pines for the PI, the femme fatale client, a cheating husband, and the PI's long-gone ex-wife. While these are certainly well-established hard-boiled types, Swift is much more interested in noir than hard-boiled. Now "noir" is itself a very tricksy word in film and litcrit circles, with many and varied meanings. However, noir's main recurring theme is that of fate, and fate is what Swift is really interested in investigating in this novel. Another of noir's key themes is the individual's inability to escape the past, and this too, plays a major role. The story takes place over the course of a day in the head of middle-aged George Webb, the aforementioned ex-cop turned private investigator. His interior monologue takes quite a while to get used to, lurching around in fits and starts, back and forth in time, with little glimpses here and there. This is a canny writing job of capturing the fractured nature of thought, which is rarely so kind as to adhere to complete direct syntaxóbut it also makes for jarring reading. The style only really works because it's a special day for Webb: the anniversary of the day a client killed her husband. Not just any client, but the client he's become completely obsessed with and visits every two weeks in jail. Over the course of this emotionally distressing day, Webb's thoughts gradually reveal not only the story of his client's crime, but the story of his dismissal from the police, as well as his childhood, and his relationship with his daughter. Swift is careful to release only micrograms of information at a time, so that the complete portrait of Webb's life accumulates in fragments, like a pointillist painting gradually coming alive as the dots mount up. But for all this coyness, there's no real suspense in the narrative, events proceed along an inevitable track dictated by fate. It's heavily suggested early on that Webb was unjustly dismissed from the police, and it turns out he was. Webb's career in "matrimonial " detective work turns out to be linked to his childhood. Webb's obsession with his murderess client is based on... well... nothing really, it just inexplicably exists (as in a film noir). Ditto with any explanation for the client's crimeóit's just what fate had in store, and that's all there is to it. Ultimately, all of this is rather unsatisfying, if stylistically well-written. I've long wanted to read one of Swift's books, but this doesn't seem to be a good one to start with.
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