WISH YOU WERE HERE by Graham Swift

One review called this novel “emotionally gripping.”  I would call it emotionally restrained, to say the least.  The novel is largely about a dairy farming family in England, devastated by the mandated killing of all their perfectly healthy cattle, due to an outbreak of mad-cow disease.  The mother in the family dies young, leaving two sons, Jack and Tom, and their father Michael.  The younger son, Tom, is in many ways the favorite son, but there is no animosity between the two brothers.  After Tom joins the army on his 18^th birthday and Michael dies, Jack and his long-time girlfriend Ellie sell the farm and take ownership of a caravan park (like an RV campground) on the Isle of Wight.  I’m not sure what the primary theme is here, but I would guess it’s grief, insufficiently expressed.  Tom’s death is sort of the last straw, as far as Jack is concerned.  Also, this is the second novel I’ve read recently where an ailing dog figures largely in the plot.  This novel is about men, specifically emotionally stifled men, but it’s not the kind of thing I think that most men are likely to read.  Consequently, it leaves this woman reader scratching her head, asking, “What’s it all about?”  Jack is an ordinary guy who has endured tragedy and then basically loses it at the end.  Until that point, for which there is substantial foreshadowing involving a gun, Jack’s inner turmoil is understated.  The finale is indeed gripping, but the lead-up doesn’t really build to a boiling point.  Rather, it just chugs along, and then Jack suddenly becomes someone that we don’t recognize.