The Paris Wife

Fiction based on real figures in history is a fraught field. Hilary Mantel pulled it off with Wolf Hall, told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, an adviser to England's King Henry VIII.

Success hinges not just on quality of research but also the writer's ability to bring characters to life.

McLain takes on an ambitious project: little- known Hadley Richardson, first wife of Ernest

Hemingway, the early 20th-century American writer of classics such as The Sun Also Rises, not to mention war hero and Great White Hunter of beasts and beauty (four wives, numerous lovers).

Hadley who? You well might ask.

WISH YOU WERE HERE

WISH YOU WERE HERE
By Graham Swift

In literature, the polysyllabic, multi- word sentence enchants with its eloquence. In real life, short, simple phrases strike straight to the heart.

When truly deep emotions are expressed, three words or four easily suffice to enthral, wound or captivate: 'I love you', 'I miss you'. In the case of British writer Graham Swift's latest novel, it is: 'Wish you were here.'

While a teen, the book's protagonist Jack Luxton writes this phrase on a postcard to his star-crossed sweetheart. He is unaware that the wording is considered trite. Neither would he care, for those four words, pulled out of him like a deeply rooted tooth, hold sagas-worth of love, yearning and sorrow.

He is capable of alarmingly deep sentiment and incapable of ever expressing it adequately. A scion of solid farming stock, he is of the type referred to as 'the salt of the earth', and other similar idioms around the world.

Seemingly unshaken by bad weather, crop disaster and cattle disease, his kind put in harsh, 16-hour-long days, until one final drought or blight leads them to the back barn and the solace of a noose or gun, leaving neighbours to wonder and mutter.

Death, the attendant grief of survivors and the ability or inability to express sorrow are themes Swift has visited before in the Booker Prize-winning Last Orders (1996), about friends with a shared war history carrying out the funeral wishes of one of their number.

In Wish You Were Here, he describes with quiet splendour the tight descent into anguish and raw emotion as a man, unable to say what he truly feels for his loved ones, is forced to deal with the demise of a beloved younger brother.