Graham Swift knows that life is a haphazard business, that experience and understanding, memory too, do not emerge in orderly fashion. He also knows that the dramas of life are tiny pools in the great flood of years. His novels progress quietly with casual ease; even the surprises hit the page with the gentlest of thuds. I have read all but two of Swift’s thirteen novels. I am an admirer, and even more so after reading his latest, Here We Are.

The novel is set largely in the English summer of 1959, with perfectly pitched forays into the present. Swift brings together three characters: Robbie Deane, a magician; Evie, his assistant; and Jack, showman and actor. These are seemingly ordinary people living ordinary lives, but Swift always finds the extraordinary in the ordinary. He builds his three characters layer by layer, until it becomes clear that things are not as they first appeared to be. As for Robbie Deane, the magician, the Great Pablo, he leaves his best trick (although he would call it an illusion) until the very last show is over and he’s taken his final bow. Robbie has proven himself to be a wizard, a wonder – rather like his creator.

Andrea Goldsmith is a friend of Readings. Her most recent novel is Invented Lives.