SOURCE: "Shutter and Lens," in The Observer, March 13, 1988, p. 43.

Lee is an English critic, editor, nonfiction writer, and educator. In the following mixed review, she discusses stylistic and thematic aspects of Out of This World, noting, in particular, Swift's focus on mythology and photography. Although she praises the volume's focus and aims, she concludes that the work's "good ideas float about on the surface, and haven't sunk down into the rich, vividly realised depths of Shuttlecock or Waterland."

The history teacher of Graham Swift's marvellous novel Waterland told us that life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. The past may drown us, but to be amnesiac would be idiocy.

In that book, water was the element; now in Out Of This World, it is air. History was the lesson then, now it is myth. The sad, contemplative voice of the middle-aged narrators in Waterland and...