Items related to Mothering Sunday: a romance
***LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE***
From the Booker-winning author of Last Orders and Waterland comes a long-awaited new novel. ‘Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly... Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ The Guardian
It is March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday.
How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?
Beginning with an intimate assignation and opening to embrace decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.
Praise for Mothering Sunday:
‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know ... It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ The Observer
'Dazzling . . . a vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy . . . wonderfully accomplished' Sunday Times
'Stunning . . . It is about the most perfect novel you could wish to read' The Guardian
'From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game' Evening Standard
'Exquisite . . . Mothering Sunday shows love, lust and ordinary decency straining against the bars of an unjust English caste system' Kazuo Ishiguro
‘Mastery and resonance . . . It’s one of the novel’s great strengths to be able to shift with such agility between focus scene and lifetime recollection . . . the languid, blissful minutes of March 30, 1924 seem to contain all the succeeding decades’ Times Literary Supplement
'A dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive' Herald Scotland
'A jewel of a book, a subtle, erotically charged novella suspended between past and future' Hermione Lee
'A work of gold from the subtle pen of the great Graham Swift' Le Monde
'With this novel he captures what it means to be alive' Der Spiegel
‘An exquisite novella of love and loss . . . a short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . every sentence counting and not a word out of place’ The Australian
From the Booker-winning author of Last Orders and Waterland comes a long-awaited new novel. ‘Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly... Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ The Guardian
It is March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday.
How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?
Beginning with an intimate assignation and opening to embrace decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.
Praise for Mothering Sunday:
‘Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know ... It may just be Swift’s best novel yet’ The Observer
'Dazzling . . . a vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy . . . wonderfully accomplished' Sunday Times
'Stunning . . . It is about the most perfect novel you could wish to read' The Guardian
'From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game' Evening Standard
'Exquisite . . . Mothering Sunday shows love, lust and ordinary decency straining against the bars of an unjust English caste system' Kazuo Ishiguro
‘Mastery and resonance . . . It’s one of the novel’s great strengths to be able to shift with such agility between focus scene and lifetime recollection . . . the languid, blissful minutes of March 30, 1924 seem to contain all the succeeding decades’ Times Literary Supplement
'A dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive' Herald Scotland
'A jewel of a book, a subtle, erotically charged novella suspended between past and future' Hermione Lee
'A work of gold from the subtle pen of the great Graham Swift' Le Monde
'With this novel he captures what it means to be alive' Der Spiegel
‘An exquisite novella of love and loss . . . a short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . every sentence counting and not a word out of place’ The Australian
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
A demonstration of what this Booker winner can do.
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Save some tissues for Graham Swift s latest, an exquisite, emotionally resonant romance.
Entertainment Weekly
"Intense . . . the lush, sorroful prose gives considerable pleasure."
Sophie Gee, The New York Times Book Review
Graham Swift s slim, incantatory new book is one of those deceptively spare tales (like Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending) that punch well above their weight. . . . More than just a story about crossing impossible barriers like class and education it is a love song to books, and to finding words, language, and a voice. . . . It is a book you ll want to read more than once and then urge on your friends.
Heller McAlpin, NPR
Swift accomplishes a great deal in such a tight narrative. . . . A sort of deeper Downton Abbey . . . It can be read in a sitting or two, and could make your day.
Robert Cremins, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Mothering Sunday is a dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive. You finish it and immediately read it again.
Jackie McGlone, The Herald (Scotland)
A kind of feminist Cinderella . . . haunting . . . possesses a new emotional intensity.
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
In examining Jane s fears and her joys, her dreams and her dreads, Swift captures in all its complexity what it means to love someone you know will hurt you. But Mothering Sunday is about more than that. It is about every unrealized future, about all the scenes that never occur, but wait in the wings of possibility . . . a touching, profound and above all intimate portrayal of a relationship from the perspective of a woman whom it indelibly changed.
Drew Schwartz, Readers Digest
Powerful . . . dazzling . . . beautifully written and carefully observed, redolent with genuine and often contradictory emotion. . . . Swift is a master of subtlety, of the meaningful nuance, the casual gesture, the break in speech. Mothering Sunday is a masterpiece of understatement, of fundamental human truth and the simplicity, and significance, of single moments. It s a stunning achievement, one woman s story explored through the events of a single day that served as a door opening to her future.
Robert J. Wiersema, National Post (Toronto)
A magnificent book, a small miracle . . . an intricate examination of our notions of love and sex, class and gender, fact and fiction and the act of memory itself . . . Exposing the extraordinary within the unexceptional has always been Swift s genius. And so it is here. . . . Understated and enthralling, a majestic performance.
Stephen Finucan, Toronto Star
A short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . engaging and exquisite . . . It may not be Swift s meatiest book, but with every sentence counting, and not a word out of place, it is his most perfectly formed.
Malcolm Forbes, The Australian
Masterful . . . [Swift] performs a complex enough conjuring trick, creating a perfect small tragedy with all the spring and tension of a short story, spinning around it a century of consequences with so light a touch that they only brush against the charmed centre. . . . Mothering Sunday is both a dissection of the nature of fiction and a gripping story; a private catastrophe played out in the quiet drawing rooms of the English upper middle-class, the drama that unfolds is all the more potent for its containment. . . . The narrative . . . accumulates the saturated erotic intensity of a Donne sonnet. . . . Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly. . . . Swift s small fiction feels like a masterpiece.
Christobel Kent, The Guardian
An almost musical quality, like a Bach prelude and fugue reworking and reinventing themes and ideas . . . both unsettling and deeply affecting. Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives the parallel stories we can never know. . . . It may just be Swift s best novel yet.
Hannah Beckerman, The Observer (London)
Love and death and much in between are expertly handled in this short but powerful novella.
Harry Ritchie, The Daily Mail (London)
Swift has written a book that is not just his most moving and intricate but his most engrossing, too.
Leo Robson, Financial Times
This is the story of a woman s becoming, as she discovers her power and possibility. It is a lot to pack into such a slim and tidy volume. But for all the detailed examination of character and the bold sweep of time, there is not a word wasted. . . . A lesson in poetic brevity . . . There is a lulling quality to the movement between sections of the book rhythms and repetitions, the ebb and flow of a tide, the wearing down of rock to form sand on a beach. . . . This is a rare read indeed.
Ellah Allfrey, The Spectator
A dazzling novel . . . beautiful . . . A vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy. The shires gentry and their servants move around the pages with solid authenticity. . . . Wonderfully accomplished.
Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times (London)
This deceptively short, sexy novel reflects on big themes . . . Proustian . . . reminiscent of Edward Thomas s great poem Adlestrop . . . a Conradian homage to a wellspring of inspiration.
James Runcie, The Independent
From start to finish Swift s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game.
Ian Thomson, Evening Standard
Mothering Sunday recommends itself as an antidote to the cloying sentimentalities of Downton.
John Sutherland, The Times (London)
A perfect gem of a novel. With his unmistakable gift for detailed exactitude and emotional subtlety, Swift lightly touches on weighty issues of loss and abandonment, boldness and survival. The antidote toDownton Abbey sprolonged manor-house soap opera, Swift s succinct rags-to-riches tale of a young woman s unexpected metamorphosis is a rich and nuanced evocation of an innocent yet titillating time.
Carol Haggas, Booklist(starred review)
This elegiac tale offers a haunting portrait of lives in a world in transition. . . . [Swift s] depiction of a fragile caste clinging to traditions that define their sense of noblesse oblige while struggling to bear the era s crushing burden of accumulated loss and grief is poignant and moving as is his intimation of a brilliant personal destiny that rises from the ashes of a tragically bygone social order.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Sly humor and sensual detail . . . Jane is a marvelous creation who can seam wry, world-weary, innocent, or lusty. Swift has fun with language, with class conventions, and with narrative expectations in a novel where nothing is as simple or obvious as it seems at first.
Kirkus (starred review)
This is a book about tales, and about time; about fictional truth and the fiction-making we call memory, and about words, an invisible skin, enwrapping the world and giving it reality. The world would exist without words, but tales and memory would not. . . . The book s subtitle is A Romance, and undeniably it is one. On length alone it will be called a novella. By whatever name one might call it, it is a masterpiece, as indelible as only the best tales are.
Keshava Guha, The Hindu
Swift s pristine gentle prose speaks to us about class in many senses money, lineage, gender but it speaks softly. It speaks also of memory, about truth and about knowing the truth.
Sandipan Deb, India Today"
"A demonstration of what this Booker winner can do."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Save some tissues for Graham Swift's latest, an exquisite, emotionally resonant romance."
--Entertainment Weekly "Intense . . . the lush, sorroful prose gives considerable pleasure."
--Sophie Gee, The New York Times Book Review "Graham Swift's slim, incantatory new book is one of those deceptively spare tales (like Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending) that punch well above their weight. . . . More than just a story about crossing 'impossible barriers' like class and education it is a love song to books, and to finding words, language, and a voice. . . . It is a book you'll want to read more than once--and then urge on your friends."
--Heller McAlpin, NPR "Swift accomplishes a great deal in such a tight narrative. . . . A sort of deeper Downton Abbey . . . It can be read in a sitting or two, and could make your day."
--Robert Cremins, Minneapolis Star Tribune "Mothering Sunday is a dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive. You finish it and immediately read it again."
--Jackie McGlone, The Herald (Scotland) "A kind of feminist Cinderella . . . haunting . . . possesses a new emotional intensity."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "In examining Jane's fears and her joys, her dreams and her dreads, Swift captures--in all its complexity--what it means to love someone you know will hurt you. But Mothering Sunday is about more than that. It is about every unrealized future, about 'all the scenes that never occur, but wait in the wings of possibility' . . . a touching, profound and--above all--intimate portrayal of a relationship from the perspective of a woman whom it indelibly changed."
--Drew Schwartz, Readers Digest "Powerful . . . dazzling . . . beautifully written and carefully observed, redolent with genuine--and often contradictory--emotion. . . . Swift is a master of subtlety, of the meaningful nuance, the casual gesture, the break in speech. Mothering Sunday is a masterpiece of understatement, of fundamental human truth and the simplicity, and significance, of single moments. It's a stunning achievement, one woman's story explored through the events of a single day that served as a door opening to her future."
--Robert J. Wiersema, National Post (Toronto) "A magnificent book, a small miracle . . . an intricate examination of our notions of love and sex, class and gender, fact and fiction and the act of memory itself . . . Exposing the extraordinary within the unexceptional has always been Swift's genius. And so it is here. . . . Understated and enthralling, a majestic performance."
--Stephen Finucan, Toronto Star "A short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . engaging and exquisite . . . It may not be Swift's meatiest book, but with every sentence counting, and not a word out of place, it is his most perfectly formed."
--Malcolm Forbes, The Australian "Masterful . . . [Swift] performs a complex enough conjuring trick, creating a perfect small tragedy with all the spring and tension of a short story, spinning around it a century of consequences with so light a touch that they only brush against the charmed centre. . . . Mothering Sunday is both a dissection of the nature of fiction and a gripping story; a private catastrophe played out in the quiet drawing rooms of the English upper middle-class, the drama that unfolds is all the more potent for its containment. . . . The narrative . . . accumulates the saturated erotic intensity of a Donne sonnet. . . . Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly. . . . Swift's small fiction feels like a masterpiece."
--Christobel Kent, The Guardian "An almost musical quality, like a Bach prelude and fugue reworking and reinventing themes and ideas . . . both unsettling and deeply affecting. Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives--the parallel stories--we can never know. . . . It may just be Swift's best novel yet."
--Hannah Beckerman, The Observer (London) "Love and death and much in between are expertly handled in this short but powerful novella."
--Harry Ritchie, The Daily Mail (London) "Swift has written a book that is not just his most moving and intricate but his most engrossing, too."
--Leo Robson, Financial Times "This is the story of a woman's becoming, as she discovers her power and possibility. It is a lot to pack into such a slim and tidy volume. But for all the detailed examination of character and the bold sweep of time, there is not a word wasted. . . . A lesson in poetic brevity . . . There is a lulling quality to the movement between sections of the book--rhythms and repetitions, the ebb and flow of a tide, the wearing down of rock to form sand on a beach. . . . This is a rare read indeed."
--Ellah Allfrey, The Spectator "A dazzling novel . . . beautiful . . . A vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy. The shires gentry and their servants move around the pages with solid authenticity. . . . Wonderfully accomplished."
--Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times (London) "This deceptively short, sexy novel reflects on big themes . . . Proustian . . . reminiscent of Edward Thomas's great poem 'Adlestrop' . . . a Conradian homage to a wellspring of inspiration."
--James Runcie, The Independent "From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game."
--Ian Thomson, Evening Standard
"Mothering Sunday recommends itself as an antidote to the cloying sentimentalities of Downton."
--John Sutherland, The Times (London) "A perfect gem of a novel. With his unmistakable gift for detailed exactitude and emotional subtlety, Swift lightly touches on weighty issues of loss and abandonment, boldness and survival. The antidote to Downton Abbey's prolonged manor-house soap opera, Swift's succinct rags-to-riches tale of a young woman's unexpected metamorphosis is a rich and nuanced evocation of an innocent yet titillating time."
--Carol Haggas, Booklist (starred review) "This elegiac tale offers a haunting portrait of lives in a world in transition. . . . [Swift's] depiction of a fragile caste clinging to traditions that define their sense of noblesse oblige while struggling to bear the era's crushing burden of 'accumulated loss and grief' is poignant and moving--as is his intimation of a brilliant personal destiny that rises from the ashes of a tragically bygone social order."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Sly humor and sensual detail . . . Jane is a marvelous creation who can seam wry, world-weary, innocent, or lusty. Swift has fun with language, with class conventions, and with narrative expectations in a novel where nothing is as simple or obvious as it seems at first."
--Kirkus (starred review) "This is a book about tales, and about time; about fictional truth and the fiction-making we call memory, and about...
Book Description:
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Save some tissues for Graham Swift s latest, an exquisite, emotionally resonant romance.
Entertainment Weekly
"Intense . . . the lush, sorroful prose gives considerable pleasure."
Sophie Gee, The New York Times Book Review
Graham Swift s slim, incantatory new book is one of those deceptively spare tales (like Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending) that punch well above their weight. . . . More than just a story about crossing impossible barriers like class and education it is a love song to books, and to finding words, language, and a voice. . . . It is a book you ll want to read more than once and then urge on your friends.
Heller McAlpin, NPR
Swift accomplishes a great deal in such a tight narrative. . . . A sort of deeper Downton Abbey . . . It can be read in a sitting or two, and could make your day.
Robert Cremins, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Mothering Sunday is a dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive. You finish it and immediately read it again.
Jackie McGlone, The Herald (Scotland)
A kind of feminist Cinderella . . . haunting . . . possesses a new emotional intensity.
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
In examining Jane s fears and her joys, her dreams and her dreads, Swift captures in all its complexity what it means to love someone you know will hurt you. But Mothering Sunday is about more than that. It is about every unrealized future, about all the scenes that never occur, but wait in the wings of possibility . . . a touching, profound and above all intimate portrayal of a relationship from the perspective of a woman whom it indelibly changed.
Drew Schwartz, Readers Digest
Powerful . . . dazzling . . . beautifully written and carefully observed, redolent with genuine and often contradictory emotion. . . . Swift is a master of subtlety, of the meaningful nuance, the casual gesture, the break in speech. Mothering Sunday is a masterpiece of understatement, of fundamental human truth and the simplicity, and significance, of single moments. It s a stunning achievement, one woman s story explored through the events of a single day that served as a door opening to her future.
Robert J. Wiersema, National Post (Toronto)
A magnificent book, a small miracle . . . an intricate examination of our notions of love and sex, class and gender, fact and fiction and the act of memory itself . . . Exposing the extraordinary within the unexceptional has always been Swift s genius. And so it is here. . . . Understated and enthralling, a majestic performance.
Stephen Finucan, Toronto Star
A short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . engaging and exquisite . . . It may not be Swift s meatiest book, but with every sentence counting, and not a word out of place, it is his most perfectly formed.
Malcolm Forbes, The Australian
Masterful . . . [Swift] performs a complex enough conjuring trick, creating a perfect small tragedy with all the spring and tension of a short story, spinning around it a century of consequences with so light a touch that they only brush against the charmed centre. . . . Mothering Sunday is both a dissection of the nature of fiction and a gripping story; a private catastrophe played out in the quiet drawing rooms of the English upper middle-class, the drama that unfolds is all the more potent for its containment. . . . The narrative . . . accumulates the saturated erotic intensity of a Donne sonnet. . . . Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly. . . . Swift s small fiction feels like a masterpiece.
Christobel Kent, The Guardian
An almost musical quality, like a Bach prelude and fugue reworking and reinventing themes and ideas . . . both unsettling and deeply affecting. Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives the parallel stories we can never know. . . . It may just be Swift s best novel yet.
Hannah Beckerman, The Observer (London)
Love and death and much in between are expertly handled in this short but powerful novella.
Harry Ritchie, The Daily Mail (London)
Swift has written a book that is not just his most moving and intricate but his most engrossing, too.
Leo Robson, Financial Times
This is the story of a woman s becoming, as she discovers her power and possibility. It is a lot to pack into such a slim and tidy volume. But for all the detailed examination of character and the bold sweep of time, there is not a word wasted. . . . A lesson in poetic brevity . . . There is a lulling quality to the movement between sections of the book rhythms and repetitions, the ebb and flow of a tide, the wearing down of rock to form sand on a beach. . . . This is a rare read indeed.
Ellah Allfrey, The Spectator
A dazzling novel . . . beautiful . . . A vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy. The shires gentry and their servants move around the pages with solid authenticity. . . . Wonderfully accomplished.
Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times (London)
This deceptively short, sexy novel reflects on big themes . . . Proustian . . . reminiscent of Edward Thomas s great poem Adlestrop . . . a Conradian homage to a wellspring of inspiration.
James Runcie, The Independent
From start to finish Swift s is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game.
Ian Thomson, Evening Standard
Mothering Sunday recommends itself as an antidote to the cloying sentimentalities of Downton.
John Sutherland, The Times (London)
A perfect gem of a novel. With his unmistakable gift for detailed exactitude and emotional subtlety, Swift lightly touches on weighty issues of loss and abandonment, boldness and survival. The antidote toDownton Abbey sprolonged manor-house soap opera, Swift s succinct rags-to-riches tale of a young woman s unexpected metamorphosis is a rich and nuanced evocation of an innocent yet titillating time.
Carol Haggas, Booklist(starred review)
This elegiac tale offers a haunting portrait of lives in a world in transition. . . . [Swift s] depiction of a fragile caste clinging to traditions that define their sense of noblesse oblige while struggling to bear the era s crushing burden of accumulated loss and grief is poignant and moving as is his intimation of a brilliant personal destiny that rises from the ashes of a tragically bygone social order.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Sly humor and sensual detail . . . Jane is a marvelous creation who can seam wry, world-weary, innocent, or lusty. Swift has fun with language, with class conventions, and with narrative expectations in a novel where nothing is as simple or obvious as it seems at first.
Kirkus (starred review)
This is a book about tales, and about time; about fictional truth and the fiction-making we call memory, and about words, an invisible skin, enwrapping the world and giving it reality. The world would exist without words, but tales and memory would not. . . . The book s subtitle is A Romance, and undeniably it is one. On length alone it will be called a novella. By whatever name one might call it, it is a masterpiece, as indelible as only the best tales are.
Keshava Guha, The Hindu
Swift s pristine gentle prose speaks to us about class in many senses money, lineage, gender but it speaks softly. It speaks also of memory, about truth and about knowing the truth.
Sandipan Deb, India Today"
"A demonstration of what this Booker winner can do."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Save some tissues for Graham Swift's latest, an exquisite, emotionally resonant romance."
--Entertainment Weekly "Intense . . . the lush, sorroful prose gives considerable pleasure."
--Sophie Gee, The New York Times Book Review "Graham Swift's slim, incantatory new book is one of those deceptively spare tales (like Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending) that punch well above their weight. . . . More than just a story about crossing 'impossible barriers' like class and education it is a love song to books, and to finding words, language, and a voice. . . . It is a book you'll want to read more than once--and then urge on your friends."
--Heller McAlpin, NPR "Swift accomplishes a great deal in such a tight narrative. . . . A sort of deeper Downton Abbey . . . It can be read in a sitting or two, and could make your day."
--Robert Cremins, Minneapolis Star Tribune "Mothering Sunday is a dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive. You finish it and immediately read it again."
--Jackie McGlone, The Herald (Scotland) "A kind of feminist Cinderella . . . haunting . . . possesses a new emotional intensity."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "In examining Jane's fears and her joys, her dreams and her dreads, Swift captures--in all its complexity--what it means to love someone you know will hurt you. But Mothering Sunday is about more than that. It is about every unrealized future, about 'all the scenes that never occur, but wait in the wings of possibility' . . . a touching, profound and--above all--intimate portrayal of a relationship from the perspective of a woman whom it indelibly changed."
--Drew Schwartz, Readers Digest "Powerful . . . dazzling . . . beautifully written and carefully observed, redolent with genuine--and often contradictory--emotion. . . . Swift is a master of subtlety, of the meaningful nuance, the casual gesture, the break in speech. Mothering Sunday is a masterpiece of understatement, of fundamental human truth and the simplicity, and significance, of single moments. It's a stunning achievement, one woman's story explored through the events of a single day that served as a door opening to her future."
--Robert J. Wiersema, National Post (Toronto) "A magnificent book, a small miracle . . . an intricate examination of our notions of love and sex, class and gender, fact and fiction and the act of memory itself . . . Exposing the extraordinary within the unexceptional has always been Swift's genius. And so it is here. . . . Understated and enthralling, a majestic performance."
--Stephen Finucan, Toronto Star "A short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . engaging and exquisite . . . It may not be Swift's meatiest book, but with every sentence counting, and not a word out of place, it is his most perfectly formed."
--Malcolm Forbes, The Australian "Masterful . . . [Swift] performs a complex enough conjuring trick, creating a perfect small tragedy with all the spring and tension of a short story, spinning around it a century of consequences with so light a touch that they only brush against the charmed centre. . . . Mothering Sunday is both a dissection of the nature of fiction and a gripping story; a private catastrophe played out in the quiet drawing rooms of the English upper middle-class, the drama that unfolds is all the more potent for its containment. . . . The narrative . . . accumulates the saturated erotic intensity of a Donne sonnet. . . . Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly. . . . Swift's small fiction feels like a masterpiece."
--Christobel Kent, The Guardian "An almost musical quality, like a Bach prelude and fugue reworking and reinventing themes and ideas . . . both unsettling and deeply affecting. Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives--the parallel stories--we can never know. . . . It may just be Swift's best novel yet."
--Hannah Beckerman, The Observer (London) "Love and death and much in between are expertly handled in this short but powerful novella."
--Harry Ritchie, The Daily Mail (London) "Swift has written a book that is not just his most moving and intricate but his most engrossing, too."
--Leo Robson, Financial Times "This is the story of a woman's becoming, as she discovers her power and possibility. It is a lot to pack into such a slim and tidy volume. But for all the detailed examination of character and the bold sweep of time, there is not a word wasted. . . . A lesson in poetic brevity . . . There is a lulling quality to the movement between sections of the book--rhythms and repetitions, the ebb and flow of a tide, the wearing down of rock to form sand on a beach. . . . This is a rare read indeed."
--Ellah Allfrey, The Spectator "A dazzling novel . . . beautiful . . . A vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy. The shires gentry and their servants move around the pages with solid authenticity. . . . Wonderfully accomplished."
--Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times (London) "This deceptively short, sexy novel reflects on big themes . . . Proustian . . . reminiscent of Edward Thomas's great poem 'Adlestrop' . . . a Conradian homage to a wellspring of inspiration."
--James Runcie, The Independent "From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve. . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game."
--Ian Thomson, Evening Standard
"Mothering Sunday recommends itself as an antidote to the cloying sentimentalities of Downton."
--John Sutherland, The Times (London) "A perfect gem of a novel. With his unmistakable gift for detailed exactitude and emotional subtlety, Swift lightly touches on weighty issues of loss and abandonment, boldness and survival. The antidote to Downton Abbey's prolonged manor-house soap opera, Swift's succinct rags-to-riches tale of a young woman's unexpected metamorphosis is a rich and nuanced evocation of an innocent yet titillating time."
--Carol Haggas, Booklist (starred review) "This elegiac tale offers a haunting portrait of lives in a world in transition. . . . [Swift's] depiction of a fragile caste clinging to traditions that define their sense of noblesse oblige while struggling to bear the era's crushing burden of 'accumulated loss and grief' is poignant and moving--as is his intimation of a brilliant personal destiny that rises from the ashes of a tragically bygone social order."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Sly humor and sensual detail . . . Jane is a marvelous creation who can seam wry, world-weary, innocent, or lusty. Swift has fun with language, with class conventions, and with narrative expectations in a novel where nothing is as simple or obvious as it seems at first."
--Kirkus (starred review) "This is a book about tales, and about time; about fictional truth and the fiction-making we call memory, and about...
Award-winning writer Graham Swift returns with his profoundly moving new novel, Mothering Sunday.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherScribner UK
- Publication date2017
- ISBN 10 1471155242
- ISBN 13 9781471155246
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages160
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
£ 7.08
Shipping:
£ 2.10
Within U.S.A.
Other Popular Editions of the Same Title
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Seller Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
SIMON SCHUSTER
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Softcover
Quantity: 5
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 24761164-n
Buy New
£ 7.08
Convert currency
Stock Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
Simon & Schuster
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Softcover
Quantity: 4
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 160. Seller Inventory # 26375220039
Buy New
£ 8.17
Convert currency
Seller Image
Mothering Sunday [Soft Cover ]
Published by
Scribner UK
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Soft Cover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9781471155246
Buy New
£ 12.23
Convert currency
Seller Image
Mothering Sunday (Paperback)
Published by
Simon & Schuster Ltd, London
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Paperback
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Now a major film starring Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Odessa Young and Josh OConnor (The Crown), scripted by Alice Birch (Normal People)'Exquisite . . . Mothering Sunday shows love, lust and ordinary decency straining against the bars of an unjust English caste system' Kazuo Ishiguro It is March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday.How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?Beginning with an intimate assignation and opening to embrace decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.Praise for Mothering Sunday:Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives the parallel stories we can never know It may just be Swifts best novel yet The Observer'Dazzling . . . a vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy . . . wonderfully accomplished' Sunday Times'Stunning . . . It is about the most perfect novel you could wish to read' The Guardian'From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve . . . Swift is a writer at the very top of his game' Evening StandardFrom the Booker-winning author of Last Orders and Waterland comes a long-awaited new novel. Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly Swifts small fiction feels like a masterpiece The GuardianMastery and resonance . . . Its one of the novels great strengths to be able to shift with such agility between focus scene and lifetime recollection . . . the languid, blissful minutes of March 30, 1924 seem to contain all the succeeding decades Times Literary Supplement 'A dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive' Herald Scotland'A jewel of a book, a subtle, erotically charged novella suspended between past and future' Hermione Lee'A work of gold from the subtle pen of the great Graham Swift' Le Monde'With this novel he captures what it means to be alive' Der SpiegelAn exquisite novella of love and loss . . . a short yet powerful and intricately layered work . . . every sentence counting and not a word out of place The Australian Synopsis coming soon. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781471155246
Buy New
£ 12.77
Convert currency
Stock Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
Simon & Schuster
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 160. Seller Inventory # 371906712
Buy New
£ 6.47
Convert currency
Stock Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
Scribner UK 2017-03-09, London
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
paperback
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9781471155246
Buy New
£ 9.99
Convert currency
Stock Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
Simon & Schuster Ltd
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Paperback / softback
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. The Sunday Times bestseller - an intensely moving and beautifully written new novel from the Booker-prize winning author of Last Orders and Waterland. Seller Inventory # B9781471155246
Buy New
£ 8.11
Convert currency
Stock Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
Simon & Schuster Ltd
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Paperback
Quantity: 2
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 160 pages. 7.72x5.12x0.63 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __1471155242
Buy New
£ 8.54
Convert currency
Stock Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
Scribner UK
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Paperback
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9781471155246-GDR
Buy New
£ 10.19
Convert currency
Stock Image
Mothering Sunday
Published by
SIMON SCHUSTER
(2017)
ISBN 10: 1471155242
ISBN 13: 9781471155246
New
Softcover
Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. In. Seller Inventory # ria9781471155246_new
Buy New
£ 9.41
Convert currency