I Like Novelists Who Can Create Other

After All, What Can We Ever Gain In Forever Looking Back And Blaming Ourselves If Our Lives Have Not Turned Out Quite As We Might Have Wished?

The Booker Triumph Of Graham Swift's Moving, Effortlessly Profound Last Orders Is A Vindication Of The Quiet, Much-misunderstood Path This Fine Writer Chose To Take After The Brilliance Of Waterland More Than Ten Years Ago.

What He Wanted Was Not Just To Hear About Hailsham, But To Remember Hailsham, Just Like It Had Been His Own Childhood. He Knew He Was Close To Completing And So That's What He Was Doing: Getting Me To Describe Things To Him, So They'd Really Sink In, So That Maybe During Those Sleepless Nights, With The Drugs And The Paint And The Exhaustion, The Line Would Blur Between What Were My Memories And What Were His.

I Do Not Think I Responded Immediately, For It Took Me A Moment Or Two To Fully Digest These Words Of Miss Kenton. Moreover, As You Might Appreciate, Their Implications Were Such As To Provoke A Certain Degree Of Sorrow Within Me. Indeed- Why Should I Not Admit It? - At That Moment, My Heart Was Breaking.

What I Wished More Than Anything Was That The Thing Hadn't Happened At All, And I Thought That By Not Mentioning It I'd Be Doing Everyone Else A Favor.