Wish You Were Here - Tapa blanda

Reviews from the UK: "Like its predecessors, most notably "Waterland "and "Last Orders, Wish You Were Here "is a book of quiet emotional integrity . . . The novel expertly explores the poignant contrast between irrepressible human hope and the constraints within which we live our finite lives." --"The Times" "An extraordinary novel . . . Novelists, being on the whole brainy people, like to write about brainy people, or make their characters better with words than they would be in real life . . . But as Swift's novels so brilliantly prove, just because someone doesn't have a way with words doesn't mean they can't experience deep emotion, or be powerfully moved by the forces of history and time . . . I doubt there is a better novelist than Swift for this kind of story." --"Evening Standard" " " "Like Ian McEwan's "Saturday, "or Sebastian Faulks's "A Week in December, "this novel draws on events from the news pages . . . But this emotionally complex novel is not mere reportage . . . It is Swift's most intimately revelatory novel yet . . . This is a profound and powerful portrait of a nation and a man in crisis that, for all its gentle intensity, also manages to be an unputdownable read." --"Scotland on Sunday" " " ""Wish You Were Here "is a work of wide, ambitious span . . . Recounted in pages of affecting, powerfully sober prose . . . What gives [the novel] a compelling hold is Swift's real strength, the authenticity that hallmarks his portrayals of people in crisis." --"The Sunday Times" " " "An acutely observed, compelling read." --"Daily Mail" "Swift is as brilliant as ever on the potency of family myth . . . This novel is often astonishingly moving." --"Sunday Express" "I cannot tell you exactly how long after I finished this book that I sat, holding it, in stunned silence for--but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do that to you. This is one of them . . .

Time Out Novel of the Year `Astonishingly moving' Sunday Express 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. `Profound and powerful . . . an unputdownable read' Scotland on Sunday `A wonderful writer' Daily Telegraph