Wish You Were Here

2013 Longlist

On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton – former Devon farmer, now proprietor of a seaside caravan park – receives the news that his brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq.

For Jack and his wife Ellie this will have a potentially catastrophic impact and compel Jack to make a crucial journey: to receive his brother’s remains, but also to return to the land of his past and confront his most secret, troubling memories.

Building to a fiercely suspenseful climax, Wish You Were Here is a hauntingly compassionate story that allows us to feel the stuff of headlines as heart-wrenching personal truth.

(From Publisher)

About the Author

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of nine acclaimed novels, a collection of short stories and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. He has won many awards for his work including the 1996 Booker Prize.

Librarians’ Comments

Wish You Were Here is an extremely interesting novel written by the widely known British Author: the subject is the crisis which took place in recent years in the global scale (war in Iraq, turbulences in the banking system) and the local one as well (the hero of the novel lost his lovely cottage as the consequence of the crisis). His case is exposed as an example of the inability of a contemporary everyman to understand what is going on around him. Brilliantly composed and written, the novel is a kind of farewell to the “old, merry England” of the past.

This novel describes the breakdown of Jack Luxton. He had to sell his farm, his younger brother gets killed in Iraq and he has a disagreement with his wife. Wish You Were Here is an elegant portrait of Englishness.