KEY POINTS:
Paula Hook is happily married with twin children. On the eve of their 16th birthday she lies beside her sleeping husband reflecting on a secret that must be told to them and on the life she has experienced.
This is the springboard for Graham Swift's close, almost claustrophobic, exploration of the nature of conjugal and maternal love. Paula relives the first meetings with her husband in the sexually liberated university atmosphere of the 1960's in which the contraceptive pill had changed everything. As their relationship develops, Swift gradually unveils the interlinked relationships around which families are woven. In the manner of a classic detective story, he reveals and eliminates clues for the readers' speculation as to the nature of the secret Paula must reveal. To hint further would be to destroy the tension Swift skilfully deploys, at least for the first part of this short novel.
In previous work like Waterland and Last Orders, Swift has shown himself to be a master chronicler of ordinary lives. Here again he is pitch-perfect and as a technical exercise in first-person writing, the book is remarkable. In adopting the form of an extended soliloquy addressed to the twins, often in rather cloying terms, Swift has set himself a challenging task, stripping himself of almost all the literary weaponry of dialogue, a range of characters and incident.
But there's something vital missing from this portrait of the hidden complexities that lie beneath the smooth surface of domesticity. Once the mystery element has been removed, interest flags. The intensity of Paula's feelings for her husband and children, and her sense of the fragility of the foundation on which their apparently rock-like family exists have to be taken on trust.
The deliberately low-key nature of their lives and the lack of dramatic incident pall. It's like listening to besotted teenagers going on about their boyfriends. It's all-consuming to them but quickly becomes a bore to everyone else.
By the end of Tomorrow I was desperate for the dawn so I could leave the company of Mrs Hook and her beloved Mikey. The only remaining interest was the reaction of the twins to the revelation and it was apparent that would not be forthcoming. Perhaps that will come in a later book which might see Swift back in his usual engrossing form.
* Picador, $50
* John Gardner is a Herald assistant editor.
- Canvas
