https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/27/here-we-are-by-graham-swift-review

From the blitz to Brighton’s end-of-the-pier shows, this is a dreamlike story of England’s suburban underbelly

The story unfolds as if we’re watching it through glass. Evie White, widow of the actor Jack Robbins, goes out for lunch on the first anniversary of her husband’s death. Then she returns home, walks into the garden where Jack’s ashes were scattered, and suddenly sees all the cobwebs glittering in the dew around her, before heading back inside and upstairs to sleep. What she remembers in the course of this slight day, though, is a story that spans half a century, an account of the great vanishing act of life, which is as light and brilliant as the cobwebs in the garden.

Fifty years before, Evie was an assistant to magician Ronnie Deane, known on stage as the Great Pablo. She was also engaged to him; Jack was the compere who introduced Pablo and Evie to the crowd on Brighton Pier each evening, before running round to the back of the audience to watch the show. Graham Swift’s new novel is really Ronnie’s story. It follows his evacuation during the blitz from east London to an Oxfordshire house where he was taught magic; his alienation when he returns home and finds that it’s home no longer; his national service and path into performing with Evie and Jack. At the novel’s climax, Swift gives us a description of Ronnie’s act which, because he’s made us wait for it, is as enthralling as anything that will be published this year.