![]() ![]() Envisaging the possibility of genuine renewal appears to be a deeply problematic undertaking. ![]() Tantalizing flashes of an alternative modus vivendi are offered through the rebellion of the protagonist’s daughter against the oppressive regime imposed by her parents, but the suggestion that there is no possibility of achieving real change is at least equally prominent in the text. The mechanisms of denial to which they take recourse prove inimical to life, and yet remain in place right until the end of the novel. In my reading, the impasse in the narrative present is accounted for by the characters’ failure seriously to engage with trauma. It diagnoses the demise of a way of life based on the principles of predictability, immobility and economic circularity. Graham Swift’s debut novel The Sweet Shop Owner recounts the final day in the life of an ageing shopkeeper whose wife has died and who is estranged from his daughter. ![]()
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