Even the Dogs
A Novel
By Jon McGregor
February 2010
$14.00
208 pp
5.5 x 8.25 in
Paperback
ISBN-13: 9781596913486
ISBN-10: 1596913487
ISBN-10: 1596913487
Even the Dogs
A Novel
By Jon McGregor
David Mitchell meets Irvine Welsh in this darkly beautiful and daringly creative novel by two-time Booker Prize nominee Jon McGregor.
On a cold, quiet day between Christmas and the New Year, a man's body is found in an abandoned apartment. His friends look on, but they're dead, too. Their bodies found in squats and sheds and alleyways across the city. Victims of a bad batch of heroin, they're in the shadows, a chorus keeping vigil as the hours pass, paying their own particular homage as their friend's body is taken away, examined, investigated, and cremated.
All of their stories are laid out piece by broken piece through a series of fractured narratives. We meet Robert, the deceased, the only alcoholic in a sprawling group of junkies; Danny, just back from uncomfortable holidays with family, who discovers the body and futiley searches for his other friends to share the news of Robert's death; Laura, Robert's daughter, who stumbles into the junky's life when she moves in with her father after years apart; Heather, who has her own place for the first time since she was a teenager; Mike, the Falklands War vet; and all the others.
Theirs are stories of lives fallen through the cracks, hopes flaring and dying, love overwhelmed by a stronger need, and the havoc wrought by drugs, distress, and the disregard of the wider world. These invisible people live in a parallel reality, out of reach of basic creature comforts, like food and shelter. In their sudden deaths, it becomes clear, they are treated with more respect than they ever were in their short lives.
Intense, exhilarating, and shot through with hope and fury, Even the Dogs is an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society--littered with love, loss, despair, and a half-glimpse of redemption.
Advance 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
Reviews for Even the Dogs:
"As a novel about the consequences of addiction--particularly heroin addiction--'Even the Dogs' is harrowing. It details the physical, psychological, social and environmental damage, and portrays the all-consuming nature of the life...Using ghosts as narrators gives the book a haunting overtone. It lends resonance even to a simple observation like 'We see things differently now.' And it lets McGregor write with a gritty omniscience." —New York Times Book Review
“Powerful…When all is said and done, this is a novel about community. There are many deceptions, tensions, fights over money and drugs. But there are powerful moments of intimacy, found curiously and most readily in the depictions of Robert and his friends lovingly injecting each other with heroin. McGregor invites us to become part of their “we,” a membership that brings sorrow and disappointment, but ultimately insight.”—Tottenville Review Read full review.
"McGregor offers a forceful portrait of the junkies' tribulations."—New Yorker Read full review.
"Ambitious, haunting. thought-provoking."—Boston Globe Read full review.
“McGregor puts the reader into the minds of this interconnected web of people bent on various journeys of self-destruction. He constructs a powerful, disjointed narrative about dependency that is nearly impossible to put down, though it’s not easy reading.”—PopMatters. Read full review.
Even The Dogs on Bookgasm.