SOURCE: "Love among the Ichthyosaurs," in The New York Times Book Review, March 29, 1992, p. 21.

In the following review, Harris offers praise for Ever After.

In 1983 Graham Swift's Waterland brought attention to an esteemed new voice in English fiction. The Guardian called it "the best novel of the year," and it was a finalist for the Booker Prize. Mr. Swift had published two novels and a story collection before Waterland, and has published two novels after it, the latest Ever After.

It remains clear that Waterland is the brightest ornament of this small oeuvre. It owes its power chiefly to its setting: the Norfolk fens, from Ely to King's Lynn, a boggy plain intersected with rivers, locks and canals. At the center lies a long-concealed murder, a country tale of guilt, thwarted love and the shadow of death. The novel evokes the setting with a masterly skill—the smell...