SOURCE: "The Complaints of a Violent Family," in The Spectator, Vol. 260, No. 8331, March 12, 1988, p. 28.

Carr is an English educator, nonfiction writer, novelist, and author of children's books. In the following excerpt, he offers a mixed assessment of Out of This World, discussing the novel's characters and Swift's use of dialogue.

[Out of This World] is Graham Swift's fourth published book. The third, Waterland, is in the Big League—innovatory, moving, memorable. He took a terrifying risk in its construction and pulled it off. People and landscape, past and present are one. Long after its final page I went on regretting what had happened, apprehensive of what still might come in a life beyond the book. Its story is told in more than one tone of voice—reflective, questioning, didactic, bantering.

He has chosen to tell the story of Out of this World in another way. Well, it is...