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Mothering Sunday

By Graham Swift
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3.69 goodreads logo

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Check link for latest rating. ( 18,038 ratings, 2,255 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift is a poignant exploration of love, loss, and the fleeting moments that define our lives. Set in post-World War I England, it follows Jane Fairchild, a housemaid who spends an intimate and life-changing Mothering Sunday with her lover, Paul Sheringham, the only surviving son of a neighbouring family. The novel beautifully weaves themes of class division and the unexpected twists that shape one's future.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you appreciate evocative, character-driven narratives set in post-World War I England. You'll find a captivating exploration of themes such as love, loss, and societal changes, all beautifully woven into a poignant story of a housemaid's life-changing day. If you enjoy intricate character studies with an intimate glimpse into personal and historical transformation, this might be an exceptional read for you.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Now a major film starring Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Odessa Young and Josh O’Connor (The Crown), scripted by Alice Birch (Normal People).

Exquisite... Mothering Sunday shows love, lust and ordinary decency straining against the bars of an unjust English caste system — Kazuo Ishiguro

It is March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday. How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?

Beginning with an intimate assignation and opening to embrace decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual, and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.

Praise for Mothering Sunday:

Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know. It may just be Swift’s best novel yet — The Observer

'Dazzling... a vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy... wonderfully accomplished' — Sunday Times

'Stunning... It is about the most perfect novel you could wish to read' — The Guardian

From start to finish Swift's is a novel of stylish brilliance and quiet narrative verve... Swift is a writer at the very top of his game — Evening Standard

From the Booker-winning author of Last Orders and Waterland comes a long-awaited new novel. Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly… Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece’ The Guardian

Mastery and resonance... It’s one of the novel’s great strengths to be able to shift with such agility between focus scene and lifetime recollection... the languid, blissful minutes of March 30, 1924, seem to contain all the succeeding decades — Times Literary Supplement

'A dazzling read: sexy, stylish, subversive' — Herald Scotland

'A jewel of a book, a subtle, erotically charged novella suspended between past and future' — Hermione Lee

'A work of gold from the subtle pen of the great Graham Swift' — Le Monde

'With this novel he captures what it means to be alive' — Der Spiegel

'An exquisite novella of love and loss... a short yet powerful and intricately layered work... every sentence counting and not a word out of place' — The Australian

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift is often praised for its lyrical prose and the way it evokes an intimate portrait of a post-World War I era. Reviewers commend its exploration of themes like love, loss, and the passage of time, noting the depth and complexity of its characters. Its narrative structure and emotional depth are frequently highlighted as strengths, providing readers with a rich and evocative reading experience.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781471155246

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 09 March 2017

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Scribner UK

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 160

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Graham Swift Literary Fiction

About the Author

Graham Swift was born in 1949. He is the author of eleven novels, most recently Here We Are; three collections of short stories, including the highly praised England and Other Stories; and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize and with Last Orders the Booker Prize. Mothering Sunday became a worldwide bestseller and won the Hawthornden Prize for best work of imaginative literature. All three novels were made into films. His books have appeared in over thirty-five languages.  

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