SOURCE: "Blood Ties," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXXIX, No. 11, June 11, 1992, pp. 23-5.

Mantel is an English novelist and critic. In the following review, she examines characterization and voice in Ever After as well as the novel's relation to Swift's earlier works.

It seems to be a convention that when you are writing about Graham Swift, somewhere in the first paragraph or two you refer to "Waterland, his best book." It would be a great thing to kick over the traces and declare Waterland a mere bagatelle beside Swift's new novel; unfortunately, that is impossible. So, let us have it over with. Swift's third novel was set in the east of England, in the Fens. Its narrator, a history teacher, brooded on his family, his adolescence, on the influences that created him. Stories of his own locality were interwoven with stories of the great world...