So there you are, Ronnie. At last. Well thanks for coming anyway. What a pity we couldn't have had a last little chat. Perhaps it wouldn't have got us very far anyway, probably not. And in any case, here's the main item for you. Here I am. Here we are. This is your mother, Agnes. And here's a fine little trick for you to perform, if you're up for it. So come on.
Here We Are is rather short and sweet, filled with many vivid settings from different, transitional, time periods. Graham Swift writes lovely and interesting sentences, but while I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience, it didn't add up to very much. Still happy to have read it.
There are no magic wands, Ronnie. There are magic wands, but there are no magic wands. Do you understand me?
Here We Are is set (primarily) in three time periods: Just before and during WWII (from the POV of Ronnie Deane, an eight-year-old boy evacuated to a country manse from his modest London home); 2008, from the POV of aged former showgirl, Evie White; and the summer of 1959 on the Brighton Pier, when Ronnie and Evie paired up as a magician and his assistant, to appear in a variety show hosted by charming song-and-dance man, Jack Robbins. Each timeline demonstrates how people transition into new selves, conflating identity with illusion – performers assuming stage names, an actor being called by his most famous TV character's name on the street, a playboy's girlfriends collectively called “Flora” because no one could be bothered to remember their actual names, a married woman wanting to keep her maiden name but forever called by her husband's – and the idea of “illusion” is made manifest by the magic taught to Ronnie by his foster father in the country (a familial situation that each side wishes could be made permanent, even if it's never discussed):
He had an audience of two, and he stood facing them, the green-topped table beside him. He knew by now that the surface was called “baize”, a nice word, but he knew also that the table was not what it seemed. It was a table and not a table, and this might be true of a great many things. It was the first door that you had to pass through, as it were, into a new way of thinking about everything around you.
The variety show setting on the Brighton Pier makes for many entertaining scenes, but always, there's a sinister threat posed by the nearby sea. From Evie's thoughts:
And it was strange how in all those shows, all those performances, a whole season's worth, you hardly stopped to think – she never thought about it as she looked at her face in the mirror and placed the tiara, like a regular coronation, in her hair: The sea is right beneath us now. Right beneath us now the waves are swishing and swirling, the fish are darting, the seaweed is swaying this way and that. If the stage were to open up, we'd all go tumbling through to the water.
From Jack's:
Sometimes, beyond the stirrings and the gaspings of the audience, he might think he could hear the creakings and strainings of the pier itself, like a big foundering ship. But perhaps it was more that he was the one who was going under.
And from Ronnie's:
He bent to kiss her forehead. It was cold to his lips and she made no sign – no smile or frown or flinch – that she knew what he was doing. And he felt that his lips were touching also the cold surface of the water, the deep heedless water under which his father lay, unknowing too.
Rabbits and romance, parrots and rainbows, air raids and sequins: Swift paints beautiful word pictures that certainly capture a variety of times and place, but they feel more like nice little scenes than a complete novel. Still happy to have read it.
