Helpful Score: 1
Tried three times to get into this one, got about 2/3 through and decided not to waste any more time.
Helpful Score: 1
At its center is a group of men, friends since the Second World War, whose lives revolve around work, family, the racetrack, and their favorite pub. Now, the death of one of them, and the survivors task of driving their friend's ashes from London to the seaside town where they'llbe scattered, compels them to take stock. Through conversationand memory they trace the paths they have followed by choice and by accident: through war and its aftermath,through the dramas of their family lives and of their shifting relationships with one another.
I enjoyed this book very much. The characters are well thought out and well created. It was written so that it is easy to follow each of the characters.
AUDIO BOOK ON TAPE
UNABRIDGED, 8.5 hours on 6 cassettes
READ BY A CAST OF SEVEN
From the back cover:
"In a London pub called The Coach And Horses, four men gather. Most of them have been freinds for half a lifetime, having fought in the same war, drunk in the same pubs, and bet on the same horses. Now they have come together to deliver the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, to the sea. Their journey, which will take therm deep into their collective and individual pasts, lies at the center of Graham Swift's astonishingly moving novel of friendship, memory and fate."
"As Swift follows Ray, Vic, Lenny, and Vince on their errand - one whose solemnity is under cut by the participants' sheepishness and irrepressible humor - he braids their voices into a choir of secret sorrow and resentment, passion and regret. And what emerges is an elegy not only for Jack but for a vision of a changing England. Beautifully written, faithful to the rhythms of the human voice and the daily truths of human life and death, Last Orders is a triumph."
I haven't read the book, but I loved the movie based on this novel.
UNABRIDGED, 8.5 hours on 6 cassettes
READ BY A CAST OF SEVEN
From the back cover:
"In a London pub called The Coach And Horses, four men gather. Most of them have been freinds for half a lifetime, having fought in the same war, drunk in the same pubs, and bet on the same horses. Now they have come together to deliver the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, to the sea. Their journey, which will take therm deep into their collective and individual pasts, lies at the center of Graham Swift's astonishingly moving novel of friendship, memory and fate."
"As Swift follows Ray, Vic, Lenny, and Vince on their errand - one whose solemnity is under cut by the participants' sheepishness and irrepressible humor - he braids their voices into a choir of secret sorrow and resentment, passion and regret. And what emerges is an elegy not only for Jack but for a vision of a changing England. Beautifully written, faithful to the rhythms of the human voice and the daily truths of human life and death, Last Orders is a triumph."
I haven't read the book, but I loved the movie based on this novel.
