Last Orders

by Graham Swift (London: Picador, 1996)

“I see him scratch his neck and reset his cap. I see him light up a snout, dicky chest or no dicky chest, and breathe out the first drag, bottom lip jutting, then rub his chin with the tip of his thumb, cigarette between his fingers, then run the ball of his thumb across his forehead, and I know I do all those things, without helping it, the same gestures, the same motions.”

Three men, friends since WWII, have gathered in their local pub to carry out the final wishes of Jack Dodds, a London butcher who requested that his ashes be scattered into the sea. Jack’s adopted son Vince drives Ray, Vic and Lenny to the pier at Margate and as they travel, we learn their history. Each chapter, some just a page or two long, is narrated by a different person in the form of an interior monologue but Ray also talks us through the men’s road trip and so becomes the centre of consciousness in the book. Years of friendship and resentments lie behind every comment made and as the book progresses, we learn why none of their wives came along. Winner of the 1996 Booker Prize, Last Orders makes wonderful use of English working-class slang (snouts, daffs, aint) and tells the story of four families through an interwoven series of conversations, shifting between times and tenses, memories and revelations.

Watch a trailer for the film adaptation of Last Orders here.

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett (New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2009)

“I am afraid I have told too little. Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes in Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or the time to portray.”

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel looks at the relationships between white women and their African-American maids in early 1960s Mississippi. The story is narrated in turn by Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young university graduate who has returned to her hometown to find a job as a  journalist; Aibileen Clark, a maid and nanny employed by one of Skeeter’s good friends; and Minny Jackson, Aibileen’s best friend who keeps losing jobs as a maid because of her sass. All three women must work to complete interviews for a secret book about the lives of “the help” and their role within the  families that employ them as the atmosphere of dangerous racial intolerance in Jackson heats up around them. Stockett uses plenty of convincing Southern vernacular (Law, sho’ nuff, y’all) to convey a strong sense of time and place, and the tone of this piece of historical fiction remains optimistic despite its serious themes.

Visit Kathryn Stockett’s official website here.

March

by Geraldine Brooks (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005)

“Her face weary but smiling. I felt the grip of her will like a gaff plunged deep in me: she had been determined to see this day. She would have me back in the boat, she would keep this craft, our family, afloat, together, not matter how damaged my state, or her own, no matter how uncertain the seas.”

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, March retells Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women from the point of view of the girls' absent father, an abolitionist chaplain whose conscience forces him to leave his family in New England to serve in the American Civil War. Captain March’s journey spans several decades and covers, through flashbacks, time spent in the South before the war and his subsequent courtship of his beloved Marmee, as well as the brutality and injustices he witnesses both on and off the battlefield in 1862. The second part of this historical love story is told by Marmee herself, who nurses March back to health in Washington then brings him home, where he must reconnect with his daughters who have no idea what he has been through. The misunderstandings and sacrifices that characterise the March’s married life are described in affecting detail, and Brooks’ use of contemporary letters and journals as source material lends a sense of real period accuracy.

Click here find out more about American Civil War in literature.