Book of the week

Here We Are by Graham Swift (Simon & Schuster, $33)

I’ve been a fan of Graham Swift’s work since reading, during my youth, his iconic novel Waterland. That was 1986, and I was 13. Coupled with William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Swift’s third novel opened my mind and tongue to the mystical cadence of language, the strength of vulnerable characters and the dramatic potential of the outsider. The power of Swift’s prose in that book transcends its era and Fens landscape, and continues to inspire contemporary

authors other than myself. For instance, the recent stunning Booker Prize-shortlisted debut, Everything Under by Daisy Johnson owes a big debt to Swift and Waterland.

It’s been more than three decades since the publication of that book, and Swift has won the Booker Prize since. As his latest novel, Here We Are proves, his language, characterisation and storytelling have lost none of their power. Like Waterland, this is a historical novel anchored to its setting and focusing upon a tumultuous relationship between its protagonists. It is set at the cusp of the 1960s in Brighton and centres

upon wondrous magician Ronnie, his girlfriend-cum-assistant Evie and self-assured compere Jack.

As always with Swift, there’s a subtle distance to the voice and perspective of the new novel. Its effect is crisp, its deployment clever. So, on one hand, the author beguiles us with the rhythm of sentences such as: ‘‘She could not do that thing that all his life Jack could do – or so he’d make it seem – as easy as walking, as if for him it was no trouble at all to step out of himself, even to step through a mirror.’’

On the other, the author holds us at a distance from these characters. We feel we are close,

the rich emotion of the prose persuading us so. And yet, we are lulled into a deception, for how close are we ever to these characters?

Of Evie, for instance, the mention of the mirror underscores the novel’s interplay between linguistic intimacy and character detachment. Looking at her reflection, she recounts her lifestory connected to Ronnie and Jack. Meeting both men, working with them, falling for Ronnie: all this we access, but only through the lens of her fallible memory.

Throughout, we are like audience members in the first row of one of this trio’s performances,

Jack as compere as Ronnie and Evie perform an illusion.

Here We Are is a book of rich trickery. The mirror and reflection; the truth and friable recollection; the magician and assistant; the past and present; the host and show’s main attraction; the magic and deception: so many elements of contrast and association compose Here We Are, the book’s concision – barely 190 pages – is astonishing.

Add in the thematic dualities of sin and virtue, and forgiveness and vengeance, and this novel feels like it has more span, not just in length but in depth of plot. This too, of course, is the result of yet further Swiftian guile. – Siobhan Harvey

As always with Swift, there’s a subtle distance to the voice and perspective of the new novel.