Last Orders by Graham Swift

Last Orders by Graham Swift

Last Orders is a fabulous, breathtaking, entrancing, dazzling chef d’oeuvre that may although escape the attention of some unprepared readers, this was anyway the case with the undersigned.

Generally, one reads a transfixing book and when the motion picture based on it comes to the cinemas, the bookworm travel to the theater and he or she generally manifests a light or serious disappointment with the adaptation.

Last Orders could be the exception to the rule, for at least in one case, the film written and directed by Fred Shepisi, featuring Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Tom Courtenay, Helen Mirren, David Hemmings, Kelly Reilly and last but not least Ray Winstone, made one look for the novel to savor it with gusto.

On the first attempt, the 1996 Booker Prize Winner, may deter someone who intends to read a positive book, for we soon learn about one of the main protagonists of the narrative, Jack Dodds, who is now packed in a jar…seeing as he was cremated and is now on the chair of the Coach bar, where his friends and son are ready to take him to Margate, where his last wish was to be scattered on the pier.

On the issue of the said son, things are more complicated, for Vince had actually been adopted by Jack and his wife Amy, as he was orphaned in the war, with Jack determined to get him to work in the butcher shop called for good reason he thought Dodds an son, only the adopted rebel would rather join the army than work as a butcher.

When Vince decides to dress in uniform and travel to Aden, there were also complications with Lenny “Gunner” Tate’s daughter, who had been left pregnant by the disloyal, irresponsible young man, who would later marry under outré circumstances, a woman taken from the street by his father, given shelter in the house and then joining the prodigal son in a caravan that belonged to what could be the most important personage in the tale- Ray “Lucky” Johnson.

The latter has known Jack from the days of the World War II, during which they have fought together in the desert, near the Pyramids where they took photographs riding on a camel and the brothels where the bigger man took his fortunate friend to have his first intercourse with a woman, in Cairo.

Ray has a look at the photo of Amy and he falls in love with the woman that will become his mistress, many years later, after she will have given up on her husband, who never wanted to accept, visit and have a nice word for their biological, retarded daughter who would spend all of her life in a special home, which the writer says that is actually an asylum, in spite of the fancy, deceptive names that they get nowadays.

As they travel to Margate from Bermondsey to fulfill the departed’s last wishes, the three sons and the estranged son recall various stories, some of which they share with the others, but they mostly keep to themselves.

Ray thinks about the bets he has placed in his life, in which one of his passions, maybe the main one, has been the race track and betting, the last one being an especially important and fruitful one, as he took one thousand pounds, which Jack had asked from his son, and placed it on a very unlikely winner, which had a very advantageous rating and he won about thirty thousand pounds, that may take him and Amy to…Australia.

Lucky is not fortunate in his personal life, which is evidently much more important than the races, for after his daughter has decided to travel to and settle in Australia, from where she would not communicate with her parent for more than twenty years, his wife leaves him and he is now alone in the world.

He has had a period during which he took Amy in his camper van to see her intellectually disabled daughter, where they are once observed by the other friend, the funeral director Vi Tucker, and then his best friend’s wife may feel pity for the little man, the reason is not clear, but the fact is that they have an affair.

When Vince returns from Aden, Amy says that they must stop their relationship and she keeps seeing the now grown woman, twice a week, even if she never says a word and at the age of fifty she probably has no idea that her mother has spent a year of her life, cumulating all the visits, trying to talk to her…indeed she most likely has no idea she has a mother and probably entertains no notion at all.

Vince Dodds has been a rebel and he is now the owner and operator of what he calls Dodds Motors, but the others still refer to as a garage, and he has always had an obsession with cars that he feels that they are so fantastic as to be able to bring joy, with the ability to allow men to travel and make them so powerful and blissful.

He has been helped by Ray, who thought that he shows gratitude for Jack’s support during the war by standing by his son, only to find that his efforts had the opposite effect since the butcher wanted his son to work with him in the shop and felt aggravated when his friend gave the plot of land on which the Motors will be built.

Vince has a daughter and he feels remorse at having in a way sold her to a rich client, a man that he resents with something which is close to if not identified as racism, with his continuous violent talk about those that they used to shoot at and kill in Aden and are now flaunting their new found riches.

The former boxer, who is now in his late sixties, Lenny the former “Gunner” comes to blows with Vince, on their way to Margate and it is not just on account of the abandoned daughter, who has had a very hard time, considering she is now married to a convicted criminal and has to go and see him in prison.

Lenny and probably the other friends entertain the notion that Vince has never paid the debt to his adoptive father, except perhaps in bitterness and resentment for being bullied, as he seems to have seen it, into joining a business for which he feels nothing but contempt, seeing as he is sure that cars are the future, mobility is the new Secret of civilization and people will keep buying cars that Vince will always be there to provide.

Last Orders is a glorious novel.