TOMORROW
by Graham Swift

GRAHAM SWIFT IS THE great ventriloquist, taking on the voices of his characters to weave dark tales of deep family secrets, hidden histories and missed opportunities, almost invariably expressed in the first person.

So while it is no surprise that Tomorrow is expressed wholly from one character’s viewpoint, it is a departure that the Hooks are an extremely — an almost obscenely — happy family.

Mikey and Paula met at university in the 1960s. Both slept around, but not too much, and, after 25 years of happy marriage, they have 16-year-old twins.

After a science career researching snails (the symbolism of which will become apparent), Mikey is now editor of a successful science magazine. Paula, slightly more up-market (daddy is a High Court judge), works for an art dealer. They inhabit familiarly suburban Swift terrain — Mikey is from Orpington, the couple lived in Herne Hill, then moved to Putney — and apart from a couple of significant incidents, their lives seem, the death of parents apart, untouched by tragedy or even difficulty.

But this is Swiftland, albeit a particularly sunlit upland, and no family can exist there without some secret. So it is with the Hooks. Paula tells their story as she lies awake one night just after the twins’ 16th birthday, making clear that tomorrow they will learn something that will change their lives for ever.

Incidentally, after the absurd accuations of plagiarism from William Faulkner that dogged Swift’s Booker-prize-winning Last Orders, I was reminded of Absalom, Absalom, in which a tangled family history is related by a character lying awake in the course of a night. Is Swift teasing us?

But what is the secret? Paula and Mikey remain in love and she frequently makes clear that “she carried the twins in her womb”. So there is little doubt (but stop reading now if you don’t want to know) that it is a question of paternity. The clues are 25 years of marriage and 16-year-old children — and those slow old snails. Mikey is infertile.

For a moment it appears that the twins might be a product of Paula’s one brief infidelity, but it becomes clear that this book is about artificial insemination by donor.

Swift is not so much interested in the secret, which emerges about two thirds of the way through, but in the questions it raises — do the twins have a right to the truth and will they reject Mikey because of it? Paula is making an eloquent plea for his right to be considered their father, a right she feels cemented by the final part of their story.

Parenthood and origin are perennial themes for the novelist, so Swift is right to grasp that new technologies are changing them fundamentally.

But both technology and the law are changing so fast that there is already a dated feel about Tomorrow’s 1995 setting. Paula says that the children can never know the identity of “Mr Sperm”, the anonymous donor. That is no longer true. And, ultimately, the very happiness of the family leaves you with little doubt about how the twins will react.

More of a problem is Paula’s voice. Unusually in Swift, I found that it grated, with far too many cloying “Grandpa Pete”s, “Grandma Helen”s and “my darlings”. Swift is never uninteresting, never writes poorly, but the Hooks are too perfect. For once the great ventriloquist has failed to find a true voice.

Picador, £16.99; 248pp £15.29 (free p&p) 0870 1608080 timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

Times Recommends

• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict
• Literary festivals: a survivor’s guide