Book Review: "Here" by Richard McGuire

I was looking for new and experimental books to read and so I found this one by Richard McGuire. It's April 2025 and I looked through this book in the library - I was surprised to find that it was laid out completely differently to how I thought it would be laid out. Instead of a straight story, it is a series of pictures of a certain place from different times in history. Often these are overlaid atop each other. For example: the background will be a drawing of the place from 8'000 BCE but then it would be overlaid with squares and rectangles in which things are taking place in the 1980s and the 1990s, in the 1870s and even the future. Throughout this review I'll try to post some photos to show you what it's like.

The book starts off with a series of pictures of a living room over the course of years ranging from 2014 to 1957. In the 1950s image, a woman asks herself why she came into a room whilst she ignores a bright yellow book on a table where the reader can definitely tell she is missing something. It begins with this relatable situation in which everyone has forgotten something in their time of being alive - something we are missing. Perhaps it is something we've lost and we can't find because we are actively looking for it. This universality is a great way to present the beginning of a book all about the nature of humanity in certain spaces and how we changed the spaces to reflect ourselves.

As the book progresses, we see the 1980s where within the 1950s backdrop, a small square can be seen as if someone has overlaid a photograph of the 80s scene over it. In the 1980s, a group of elderly people tell each other jokes and as we turn the pages, we get access to different backdrop time periods - one is 8'000 BC. It is fascinating because as the time moves around in the background, the present stays the same. In a way it represents that we never really know the entire story - we are just a fragment of time. It has made me think about where I currently live as well (as my place is a Victorian/Industrial Revolution style converted factory complex) about who was here before me and what kinds of things were made here once, perhaps before it was apartments.

By the time we get the background of the 1980s, we start to see various images of different things happening at different times. We witness conversations between different people who live in this place over different times in history. Some of these are in the past from the 80s, some of these are afterwards, but we see the differences in demographics and people which makes for a beautiful montage of situation. From the person in the 1930s who is cleaning the floor to the photograph of a family to the 90s conversation we don't see the other side of - there is something haunting about knowing that the walls and floors of where you live keep constant markers of your personality and your identity.

One thing I did notice about this book is that every few pages or so, there seems to be a question of forgetting something about the past. In the 50s, a woman has forgotten why she's come into a room and now, we have a television show in which the host has forgotten where they were in the narrative of the show. It's like as time passes, humans forget things of the past, even if it is recent, but the place of 'here' does not. Again, it is a haunting view of our reality and in the wider scale of the book, makes the human in the space insignificant by comparison. The space of 'here' is always at the forefront of the narrative.

This book is so much more than that, but is also an experimental idea of how we have a view of a space and story. We may create our own narratives but often we forget that the whole narrative is perhaps bigger than we are, and bigger than we could dream of. Here seeks to prove that we are only part, and a small part at that, of a large story spanning since the beginnings of time itself to long after we have been, left our mark, and moved on from this mortal coil.