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    Light of Day
    Light of Day
    Light of Day
    Audiobook7 hours

    Light of Day

    Written by Graham Swift

    Narrated by Graeme Malcolm

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders is a luminous and gripping tale of love, murder, and redemption.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateApr 28, 2003
    ISBN9781598873061
    Light of Day
    Author

    Graham Swift

    Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eleven novels, two collections of short stories, including the highly acclaimed England and Other Stories, and of Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. His most recent novel, Mothering Sunday, became an international bestseller and won The Hawthornden Prize for best work of imaginative literature. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and with Last Orders the Booker Prize. Both novels were made into films. His work has appeared in over thirty languages.

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    Reviews for Light of Day

    3.5/5

    15 ratings13 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a story of a murder. The main character, George is an ex cop, private investigator, who was hired by Sarah to follow her husband who was having an affair with a refuge. I found the book to be painfully slow and repetitive. The author reveals the story slowly, as is a common, but really, it could have been a lot less pages and it really never goes anywhere. It is a story of one day, the two year anniversary, and is the stream of conscious of the detective, George. I don't feel anything for any of the characters. I really enjoyed his book, Waterland, but this one, not so much.
    • 4/5
      I gave this four stars because....I was engaged, I liked it, I kept reading, some beautiful turns of phrase, some interesting characters. It had the quality feel to it. BUT sometimes it dragged - he really spun it out a bit too much, the pacing not quite what it could be. Also a silly small thing that really grated on me - the way that he used "sweetheart" a lot when speaking to her in prison. Somehow jarred with the rest of it.
    • 1/5
      What an awful book. Mesmerized by his own words, Swift manages to spin ever slower circles around events we already know happen with needless jumps forward and backward. Early on he decides that his tale has so little merit that his only chance is to make his narrative so confusing that the reader may mistake obfuscation for brilliance. A complete waste of time.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of George Webb, failed police officer turned private detective. His life has been turned around by one case: the murder of Mr. Nash by his wife. Mrs. Nash hired George to follow her husband, who was cheating on her. George was drawn to her, and two years later, is still totally wrapped up in her life. Graham Swift has done an outstanding job of painting a picture of George: his personality, hopes, fears and longings. The book takes place over a single day, but with flashbacks to cover George's life. The writing is fast-paced, even though this is primarily a character study. It definitely made me want to read more by this author.
    • 3/5
      Minimal Music of the Mind, that's what this book presents you with. Incredibly precise portrait of the thoughts of private detective Webb, during a memorial day, with several flashbacks. The author succeeds in keeping this complicated structure clear enough to be followed by the reader. Whereas the form of this prose is fascinating, the content lacks tension and the plot is rather straightforward.
    • 3/5
      I have mixed feelings on this book. Author painted a very convincing picture and the imagery sticks with me. On the other hand, it did seem the story moved excruciatingly slowly at times. He would dwell for a long time on the mood of a scene and then, almost in passing, mention key plot details.
    • 4/5
      Over the course of one day private detective George Webb thinks about his life--the things he has done, the things he has ongoing, his relationships. A disgraced former cop and current private detective, a divorced father of an adult daughter, a man in a relationship of sorts with a former client serving 10 years for murder. A murder he might have stopped had he known it would occur. He himself can't figure out if he should--or how he could--get out of this relationship that consists of visits every 2 weeks.This book is a bit of a puzzle itself--as George recounts different parts of his past, the reader must fit them all together. The story is not linear, the story is one man thinking about different people and events at different times of his day.I enjoyed this, though I am sure I missed a few things in trying to piece it all together.
    • 2/5
      Moderately more engaging than watching a slow paint dry, the book nonetheless explodes very occasionally with flashes of incendiary writing. 'Light of Day' indulges for most of its length in endless, insistent, circular, inevitable, here-again/there-again repetition surrounding a violent act that puzzles and initially intrigues and the back story detailing how our private detective protagonist ended up 'the man he is' - using a series of flash-back and -forward sequences we are led through a life that collides in a conclusion that should satisfy but rather stultifies . The form does tend to pull Webb's plight and life arc into tight focus, but honestly neither make for particularly engaging reading. As a treatment of a slow-burning drift into insular obsession the novel succeeds in generating a modicum of sympathy, but little more. Swift can write tremendously compelling almost poetic sequences (particularly when detailing the relationship with his daughter, and a cop whom he faces as nemesis then acquaintance), but they are buried deep in far too many words describing far too slight of a narrative where, frankly, there is little to care about. In reading this book I found myself at one point reminded of the power of selective repitition in Edwin Morgan's "In the Snack Bar" - a poem that achieves more in a few hundred words than this novel does in its entirety. Disappointing as I had high expectations after a punchy opening chapter, and having enjoyed "Last Orders".
    • 1/5
      No. I cannot get on with this. Reading it is like listening to two radio stations at the same time. Two much cross interference. And really I feel the complication is all to do with the method of telling rather than anything else. One long fragmented flashback is intercut into a boring car trip. Did not finish. Life being too short.
    • 5/5
      Ex-cop and private detective George Webb reflects on his past and revisits his old relationships, to find meaning in recent tragic events. The author’s knack for readable, believable dialogue makes for a compelling, addictive novel that pleases from start to finish. This, mixed with an incredible sense of structure and atmosphere, places Swift head and shoulders above the competition.
    • 4/5
      Again, a gem, a little flickering diamond, an (almost) everyday story but told, unfold, wrapped and unwrapped in the simple but stylish way that became in later novels the trademark of the author. The inevitable drama of falling in love told in multiple ways, turning lives inside out. The complexity of marriage, or should it rather be the simplicity of it but combined with the complexity of the human nature? Hard to tell, even harder to understand, certainly when observing strangers. Or are we all strangers to one another? Observations on how all these emotions can shape a life, can break it, can end it. Or just turn them inside out. Beautiful.
    • 5/5
      Amazing! It plays with the conventions of the detective story and romance. We find out almost immediately who committed the crime, and the rest of the book is about piecing together the events that led up to it, all seen from the point of view of a detective, who has fallen in love with the murderer. That summary doesn't really do it justice. It is about relationships, secrets and love - all big themes, but it is beautifully written and griping.
    • 3/5
      A good book that failed to live up to the high expectation I had developed for this author based upon Last Orders.