Here We Are, by Graham Swift, 2020

(If you say the title of this novel out loud (or in your head) does the line continue “now, entertainers”? i.e. the refrain from Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit? Or is it just me?)

Here We Are is set in the late 1950’s, and tells the story of three characters: Ronnie Deane, a stage magician, Jack Robins (stage name, Jack Robinson) a singer and comedian, and Evie, Ronnie’s assistant. Having been friends since doing National Service, Ronnie and Jack are performers in the summer season show on Brighton pier. Jack is the show’s main host, and secures a spot for Ronnie on the bill, encouraging him to get an assistant to provide some glamour to his act. Ronnie is a talented magician who evolves his act steadily with ever more sophisticated illusions. Jack is a literal ‘Jack the Lad‘ handsome and with a succession of young women on his arm. Evie joins Ronnie as his glamorous assistant.

Having established this context, the narrative then gives us the characters’ back stories. Ronnie was evacuated at the beginning of World War 2 from the London slums to a large house called in Oxfordshire. He loved it there and blossomed under the love and care of the Lawrences, a childless couple who came to treat him like their own son, the one they never had. His lifestyle improved dramatically, as did his self-confidence. He was taught magic by Mr Lawrence (stage name ‘Lorenzo’) and this becomes an passion for him.

We learn less about Jack and Evie’s background, perhaps because it is less important to the novel’s turning point. The narration jumps forward almost fifty years and picked up by Evie, now 75 years old, looking back on the events of the summer on the pier. We find out that although she was engaged to Ronnie that summer, becoming close as they worked together on the increasingly complex magic show, when he went to London to visit his dying mother she slept with Jack. Ronnie easily finds this out when he returns – she really makes no attempt to hide what happened. But there is no big explosion of anger from Ronnie, who continues to perform their act.

The summer season is coming to an end and Ronnie’s magic show is becoming ever more complex and sophisticated, attracting ever larger audiences. The reader is told that Evie has no idea how the illusions are performed, although the inner pedant in me would insist that magician’s assistant are a key part in performing most illusions. At the fateful final show Ronnie performs some breath-taking, unbelievable illusions, then disappears, never to be traced again. Jack marries Evie and goes on to have a very successful career in television and film. After Jack’s death Evie makes one final attempt to find Ronnie, travelling to Evergrene, the house in Oxfordshire where he was evacuated to, but it is abandoned and empty.

And that’s it. This is quite a slight (I could say flimsy) novel. The portrait of Ronnie as an evacuee, who found his life immeasurably improved by the experience, was interesting. The description of the dying days of the end of the pier show being overtaken by television and film has been done many times before – there were echoes of Archie Rice in the portrait of Jack for example. The novel’s key moment depends on the suggestion that Ronnie’s magic trick was more than an illusion, an act of genuine magic, almost supernatural, which was unnecessary. The nostalgia for a bygone age of simple post-war pleasures isn’t overdone. Evie has few regrets at the end of her life, looking back over the events of that summer in Brighton with a certain fondness, even if what happened to Ronnie is never resolved. These components were all individually fine, but the sum of the parts was underwhelming. I suspect in 12 months I won’t recall what happened to Ronnie and his friends, perhaps because in the end not much did.

Here We Are, by Graham Swift, 2020