Jon McGregor

I almost dnf around page 50, but I’m glad that I pushed through and finished this. I won’t say I loved it, but it is very well crafted and something unexpected. While the “missing girl” element is important, the story is not really about that and it’s certainly not a mystery.

This is more like Akenfield plus the Up documentaries plus A Dance to the Music of Time, maybe? At first I didn’t really connect to the characters because there were so many of them and I couldn’t keep show more them straight. But over time, it swelled and built, and by the end I felt downright emotional about how beautifully the author built these simple lives into something so true-feeling. I know this village; I have lived there. But in the end I too would just be a few sentences in the long life of the place. show less

A thirteen year old girl goes missing one night on the moors. Although her parents aren’t locals, the villagers all join in the search. They find nothing. Time passes. Birds migrate. Foxes breed. Villagers go to and fro. The seasons change. A year runs its course. And still no sign of Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. And so the next year starts on its way.

This is a truly fascinating novel. Jon McGregor follows the events of this English village and its surrounding moorland over the course of 13 show more years. But the viewpoint is distant, so far above the lives of the villagers that their actions are no more significant than those in the badger sett on the edge of the town near the allotments. Yet at times McGregor swoops down on individuals, like a bird of prey, so that we see them up close, larger than life. And then, without passing judgement, he swoops out again and time passes. No single story line holds sway. There is no apparent object. Progress is entirely temporal, i.e. the passing months that mark out the year. People age. They come and go. But with no more significance than the passing rains that fill the reservoirs or the hot summers that deplete them. It’s mesmerizing.

Ultimately this is a tour de force that may not be more than that. Although McGregor’s achievement here is remarkable, I doubt it sets out a new direction for the novel form. It’s an impressive feat, but once encountered I don’t see it being repeated. I could be wrong. Nevertheless, even if this is a one-off, it is certainly well worth reading and thinking about how it achieves its ends, and what that might mean. Highly recommended. show less

The first section of the book (entitled “Lean”) begins in Antarctica where Robert (Doc) Wright is serving as general technical assistant to two young researchers. An expedition to take photos ends in tragedy. The second section (entitled “Fall”) focuses on Anna, Robert’s wife, who becomes his primary caregiver as he struggles to recover from a stroke. The final section (entitled “Stand”) centres on an aphasia support group where people are encouraged to explore different show more methods of communication in order to tell their stories.

Though the three parts might seem to belong to three different genres, they can all be called survival stories connected by the theme of communication. In the Antarctica chapter, there is a lot of miscommunication and broken communication because the men hear only snatches of each other’s voices on their radios. Then Robert’s ability to talk is compromised. In “Fall” Robert is unable to communicate easily, and Anna is given incomplete information about Robert’s condition and treatment. In “Stand” we encounter people who are experiencing different types of aphasia and learning other ways of expressing themselves, including non-verbal communication.

Isolation is also an important element in the three sections. By virtue of their remote location, the Antarctica team is isolated from the outside world, and events cause the three of them to become physically isolated from each other. Anna and Robert, accustomed to living apart, are brought together but remain emotionally isolated and struggle to connect. Everyone in the support group feels isolated because of difficulties communicating with others.

Readers will probably like different sections of the novel for various reasons, but I found something to admire in all parts. “Lean” is an adventure story with lots of action and suspense. It ends with Robert’s stream-of-consciousness which so realistically reflects his fragmented and confused thinking. What is outstanding in “Fall” is not just Robert’s struggle to adapt to his circumstances but also the impact his situation has on others, especially Anna. “Stand” for me was the weakest, but it depicts various types of aphasia and offers hope in showing people adapting to a new way of functioning in the world.

I enjoyed the characterization of Robert and Anna. Robert is a 30-year veteran of expeditions to Antarctica. He enjoys the “pure cold blessing of silence” to be found on the southernmost continent, though he spends evenings entertaining the men with “detailed stories about his early seasons at Station K.” And when he’s home, he talks so much that Anna one time tells him, “Shut the shit up!” This is the man who finds himself in a position where he has lost the ability to tell his stories and “always had to reach for the words. As though they’d been put on a high shelf in the stores. Out of reach. Or left outside, snowed under, needing to be dug out.” The traits he needed to survive in the challenging conditions of Antarctica, he has to apply to the challenges of his new life. In the opening, he serves to provide perspective to a photo, his size illuminating the scope of Antarctica’s vastness. In the end, he serves to provide a focus on both the enormity of recovery and the immense possibilities.

Like Robert, Anna also enjoys silence; she likes time alone in her garden and attends meetings of the Society of Friends which are held in silence. Then she is faced with caring for a man who struggles to speak. Her life is totally upended when Robert comes home. She is independent and self-sufficient and has become accustomed to living apart from her husband as he spent months of each of the last 30 years in Antarctica. She is a climate change scientist, but her career has to be put on hold so she can care for her husband. She admits to a friend that, “’I don’t know if I want him to come home’” and “’I don’t want to be a carer; I never really wanted to be a wife.’” We see her exhaustion as she helps Robert’s rehabilitation, with little help from social services or their self-absorbed children. She experiences a gamut of emotions: resentment, anger, and frustration.

There is much to unravel in a McGregor novel; his style is sparse, but every word is significant. If unconventional, thought-provoking literary fiction is what you enjoy, this book should be on your to-be-read pile.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski). show less

I had to read this book in incredibly small doses because every time I picked it up my heart would start clenching and clenching and it would feel too big for my chest. There are small truths that McGregor feeds me that makes me see and panic and want to throw the knowledge that I know out back into the unknown and to gather it up greedily and store it in me.

I've read reviews where people don't like the scatteredness of the book, where they don't like the fact that there are too many show more people, too many stories, too many things to read about. But this is what it is: a fact. There are so many people, stories, things around us and we don't notice. Here, McGregor is laying them in front of us saying look and take notice and we can't not take notice anymore and it makes us uncomfortable and maybe, it is from this discomfort that spawns dislike. It is true that these people - nameless, most of them - is less memorable than, say, the protagonist, and their presence is ephemeral, and I don't know them as much as I'd like to. But, I recognize them, I recognize what they are going through, and somehow, I think it's enough. show less