Out of This World [Hardcover]

Graham Swift (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1988

From the author of LAST ORDERS and WATERLAND, a novel about a disturbed aerial photographer whose career is terminated by the death of his father in a terrorist attack and the end of his marriage. His daughter is left to try and reconcile the fragments of her life. Originally published in 1989.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Any doubt that Swift, whose Waterland was nominated for England's Booker Prize, is one of the very best young British novelists should be dispelled by this beautifully written, stinging study of a family torn apart by guilt and anger. Harry Beech is a renowned photographer who specializes in recording the horrifying and grotesque; now pursuing his occupation from airplanes, he prefers to stay literally above the fray, an observer shielded by his lens. His estranged daughter Sophie, although grown and living in New York, has never forgiven him for his emotionally aloof behavior. As she struggles, with a psychiatrist's help, to keep from crumbling under the weight of her loneliness and resentment, she hears from Harry, who wants to reconcile. In chapters that alternate their voices, the author unlayers the events that created their riftparticularly the terrorist slaying of Sophie's grandfather, an arms manufacturerwhile exposing the different, equally tragic common past that may eventually reunite them. This is a powerful meditation on global and familial violence, written in prose of unerring grace and emotional precision. Paperback rights to Pocket.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

Out of This World interweaves the history of a blighted family with the tragic and ludicrous history of the twentieth century. Its alternating narrators are a father and daughter--each obsessed with the other and irrevocably estranged--surveying their losses and grievances on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

"A moving, ingenious and often very funny tale that takes us deep into his characters' wounded, resilient hearts with breathtaking virtuosity...rich, complicated, joyful, arresting."--USA Today --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Poseidon Pr; First Edition edition (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671658271
• ISBN-13: 978-0671658274
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,163,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful, brutal history of a 20th Century family, May 15, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Out of This World (Paperback)

Graham Swift is a proven master of the brooding British
drama and he continues here with a history of a family
spanning several decades, wars and generations. Swift plumbs
the depths of parental guilt, photographers' responsibility
and terrorism. You emerge from this book battered but feeling
a bit more clear about life in general.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tragedy, and Reconciliation Spanning Three Generations., February 20, 2000

By 

"james_m_b" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Out of This World (Paperback)

When Harry Beech refers to his fiancee as "She's out of this world." he reveals a happy conclusion to a life wrought with the kind of unspoken trauma not often made public. Although growing up in and inheriting monetary affluence, he has strained relationships with both his father, a physically disabled WWI veteran, and his daughter, child of his deceased wife. Emerging from a labyrinth of personal crisis, in the backdrop of the 20th century, Harry Beech does manage to mend his life and find some degree of lasting happiness. This work is deeply moving in a way that causes one to reexamine the "constants" which ordinarily typify modern life.