Jon McGregor

A new novel from celebrated British novelist Jon McGregor--twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize--Reservoir 13 tells the story of a whole English village haunted by one family's loss.

Reservoir 13

From the internationally bestselling author of Reservoir 13, this thrilling new novel of an Antarctica expedition gone wrong and its far-reaching consequences "leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story" (Hilary Mantel). Remember the training: find shelter or make shelter, remain in place, establish contact with other members of the party, keep moving, keep calm. Robert 'Doc' Wright, a veteran of Antarctic surveying, was there on the ice when the worst happened. He holds within him the complete story of that night--but depleted by the disaster, Wright is no longer able to communicate the truth. Instead, in the wake of the catastrophic expedition, he faces the most daunting adventure of his life: learning a whole new way to be in the world. Meanwhile Anna, his wife, must suddenly scramble to navigate the sharp and unexpected contours of life as a caregiver. From the Booker Prize-longlisted, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award-winning author of Reservoir 13, this is a novel every bit as mesmerizing as its setting. Tenderly unraveling different notions of heroism through the rippling effects of one extraordinary expedition on an ordinary family, Lean, Fall, Stand explores the indomitable human impulse to turn our experiences into stories--even when the words may fail us.

Lean Fall Stand

The curator of a local history museum, David Carter cannot help but wish for more: that his wife would still be the ambitious and sparkling Scottish girl he once found so irresistible and that his beloved Aunt Julia was not lost in a fog of senility, in a novel of family, memory, and self-discovery. By the accliamed author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. 25,000 first printing.

A Novel

So Many Ways to Begin

A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman's windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. A pair of itinerant labourers sit by a lake, talking about shovels and sex, while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war. These aren't the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do. Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.

This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You

From the author of Reservoir 13 Jon McGregor--winner of the Costa Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize--Even the Dogs is Jon McGregor's daring and humane exploration of homelessness and addiction, now reissued with a new introduction from Yiyun Li

Even the Dogs

a novel

Even the dogs

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Coventry Museum curator David Carter - a man driven constantly to seek the thrill of old stories made new - cannot help but wish for more- that his wife would still be the ambitious and sparkling Scottish girl he once found so irresistible, that his job could live up to the promise it once held, that his daughter's arrival will bring her parents closer together. But Auntie Julia's careless words years earlier have left David restless with the knowledge that his whole life has been constructed around an untruth. And so he attempts to begin anew, cataloguing the joys and disappointments, the migrations and arrivals, the intersecting lives around him. Because once, long ago, a young Irish girl called Mary Friel arrived in war-time London an innocent and left carrying a shame; a shame she still hopes can be diminished by a knock at the door of her Donegal home. There are so many ways to begin, and to live; so many ways to love, and to not love, and to end. Against the backdrop of post-WW2 Britain, Jon McGregor's lyrical, intimate novel explores what happens when our lives fail to take the turns we expect, and the ways we learn to let go of the people we might have been.

As broadcast on BBC radio 4: the fifteen 'prequel' stories to Reservoir 13. 'He leaves behind all other writers of his generation' Sarah Hall Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. But the aftershocks of Becky Shaw's disappearance have origins long before then, and those in the village have losses, and secrets, and stories of their own... A woman remembers a son's inexperience - and a father's rage; a young wife pushes against the boundaries of her marriage, whilst an older one finds ways to ensure the survival of hers. A hunt for a birthday present takes an alarming turn, and a teenage game grows serious. Fresh hurts open old wounds, salvation comes from unexpected quarters and chance encounters release long-buried memories. First broadcast as a series of specially-commissioned stories on BBC Radio 4, The Reservoir Tapes returns to the territory of the Booker-longlisted Reservoir 13, revealing the web of connections that bind us, and the many layers on which we all build our truths.

The Reservoir Tapes

«Un libro meraviglioso. Uno scrittore eccezionale, unico.» Paula Hawkins «Bacino 13 è formidabile: per la struttura, l'intreccio e l'abilità con cui l'autore fa vivere i personaggi... È come guardare più di un decennio di vita da un treno in lento movimento.» Roddy Doyle «Un romanzo dalla forza visionaria» The New Yorker «Con una limpidezza che brilla di poesia, McGregor mostra lo straordinario nel quotidiano.» The Sunday Times «Bacino 13 è un'opera di qualità eccezionale.» The Observer «Più che un thriller, un post-thriller: un romanzo che medita sulla tragedia di una scomparsa e sul suo inesorabile sbiadirsi nel ricordo.» The Washington Post «Jon McGregor lascerà un'impronta significativa nella letteratura. Anzi, l'ha già lasciata.» Colum McCann Inverno, campagna inglese. Rebecca Shaw ha tredici anni ed è in vacanza, quando scompare misteriosamente. I volontari del paese cominciano le ricerche, la polizia indaga e i giornalisti accorrono, stravolgendo la calma e il silenzio abituali. Eppure la vita lentamente riprende, assorbendo il dramma nel falso movimento delle stagioni che si succedono, nel periodico allungarsi e accorciarsi dei giorni e delle notti, nel ritmico mormorio della natura vegetale e animale che fa il suo corso. Nei tredici anni che seguono il vuoto lasciato da Rebecca, anche gli altri accadimenti umani che hanno luogo nel paesino – il lavoro nella campagna, le dinamiche famigliari, l’amicizia fra adolescenti, gli amori e i disamori, la malattia, la morte – appaiono come piccole accelerazioni all’interno di un ciclo che inesorabilmente perdura. E il vuoto piano piano si riempie, quasi, si direbbe, per il solo effetto del tempo, grande protagonista di questo romanzo.

Bacino 13

Sarah Hall

Jessie Greengrass

"Our first book, Reverse Engineering, is a collection of seven of the best modern short stories, each followed by a discussion with the writer – on their instincts, processes and ideas on writing." -- Publisher website

Reverse Engineering

stories

This isn't the sort of thing that happens to someone like you

The powerful first collection of short stories by Jon McGregor. From the publication of his first Booker-nominated novel at the age of twenty-six, Jon McGregor's fiction has consistently been defined by lean poetic language, a keen sense of detail, and insightful characterization. Now, after publishing three novels, he's turning his considerable talent toward short fiction. The stories in this beautifully wrought collection explore a specific physical world and the people who inhabit it. Set among the lowlands and levees, the fens and ditches that mark the spare landscape of eastern England, the stories expose lives where much is buried, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won. The narrators of these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell us what they believe to be important-in language inflected with the landscape's own understatement-while the real stories lie in what they unwittingly let slip. A man builds a tree house by a river in preparation for a coming flood. A boy sets fire to a barn. A pair of itinerant laborers sit by a lake and talk,while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war. This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You is an intricate exploration of isolation, self-discovery, and the impact of place on the human psyche. Praise for Even the Dogs: "A rare combination of profound empathy and wonderful writing." -Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Stories

This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

Als een veteraan in expedities naar de Zuidpool tijdens een storm aldaar een beroerte krijgt, heeft dat ingrijpende gevolgen voor hem, zijn vrouw en zijn kinderen.

Het woord voor rood

Se nessuno parla di cose meravigliose

Terwijl het lichaam van een overleden alcoholist door de gemeentelijke diensten naar zijn crematie wordt begeleid, overdenken enkele daklozen, alcoholisten en drugsverslaafden aan de hand van diens geschiedenis hun uitzichtloze bestaan op straat.

roman

Köpekler bile

Una calle cualquiera de una ciudad del norte de Inglaterra el último domingo de verano. Las escenas se suceden como si fuesen polaroids pegadas sobre una cartulina: estudiantes que hacen las maletas sin saber qué les depara el futuro; niños que entran y salen corriendo de sus casas; jóvenes que empiezan a despertar tras pasar la noche de fiesta; un hombre que pinta de azul pálido las ventanas de su casa; un matrimonio que se encierra en su dormitorio para hacer el amor; una pareja de ancianos que se prepara para celebrar su aniversario... Es un día como otros, en el que todo transcurre con tranquilidad hasta que se produce un terrible accidente. Un suceso tan repentino como si en la cara de los vecinos hubiese estallado el flash de una cámara. Tres años más tarde, una joven recuerda lo sucedido, y la difícil situación en que se encuentra está íntimamente relacionada con aquel accidente del pasado. El azar pone en sus manos una caja con las fotografías que un vecino tomó obsesivamente de ella y de los habitantes de la calle. En esas imágenes, lo que parecía cotidiano resulta ser extraordinario. La joven descubre que las cosas realmente importantes, aquellas de las que nadie habla, pesan sobre su presente igual que marcaron su pasado. Con una mirada omnisciente sobre los seres anónimos que habitan la ciudad, Jon McGregor seleccionado para el premio Booker con tan sólo veintiséis años, el candidato más joven hasta la fecha funde lo ordinario con lo extraordinario en una novela cuya tensión y suspense no dejan de incrementarse hasta culminar con una sorpresa que aguarda al lector en la última página.

Si nadie habla de las cosas que importan

In this Booker Prize–nominated “dream of a novel,” ordinary middle-class lives converge and collide one summer day in England (The Times). In delicate, intricately observed close-up, this novel makes us privy to the private lives of residents of a quiet street over the course of a single day, to the hopes, fears, and unspoken despairs of a diverse community: a single father with painfully scarred hands; a group of young club-goers just home from an all-night rave, sweetly high and mulling over vague dreams; and the nervous young man at number 18 who collects weird urban junk and is haunted by the specter of unrequited love. What eventually unites them is an utterly surprising and terrible twist of fate that shatters their everyday, ordinary tranquility, and all that they take for granted. A prose poem of a novel with a mystery at its center that “recalls To The Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway” (The Times), If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things was the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award and the Betty Trask Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times. It is, in the words of Ali Smith, “a tremendous read.” “A wonderful evocation of the beauty and horror of the literally everyday.” —Booklist (starred review) “Absolutely resplendent . . . does for urban England what John Cheever did for Westchester County.” —Bookpage

Tender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers.

Jon McGregor

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