ABSTRACT
The Second World War and its legacy is a recurring theme in Graham Swift's work, as is the conflict between different generations with different views of the past and its relative importance. Swift's first novel was The Sweet Shop Owner, the story of an apparently unremarkable man—Willy Chapman, the sweet-shop owner in a London suburb—who has lived a life that, superficially at least, seems narrow and constricted. The Light of Day, a story that combines elements of detective fiction with characteristically Swiftian ideas and motifs, was published in the spring of 2003. Swift's book alternates between the younger Prentis's narrative and the older one's memoir, as it unfolds its story of a troubled man searching for a route to redemption through an understanding of the sources of his father's apparent heroism. The prose Swift uses to tell his story is deliberately unshowy, an unpatronising reflection of London working-class speech in its rhythms and cadences.
