Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Even the Dogs: A Novel
    Even the Dogs: A Novel
    Even the Dogs: A Novel
    Ebook234 pages4 hours

    Even the Dogs: A Novel

    By Jon Mcgregor and Yiyun Li

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    "A ferocious book, at once intense and alarmingly unsentimental" (James Wood, The New Yorker), this intimate exploration of life at the edges of society is littered with love, loss, despair, and a half–glimpse of redemption―now reissued with an introduction by Yiyun Li

    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 heroin, they're ghosts 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; Laura, Robert's daughter, who stumbles into the drug addict's life when she moves in with her father after years apart; Heather, who has her own home 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 more immediate needs. These invisible people live in a parallel reality to most of us, out of reach of food and shelter. And in their sudden deaths, it becomes clear, they are treated with more respect than they ever were in their short lives.

    Winner of the International Dublin Literary Award, Even the Dogs is a daring and humane exploration of homelessness and addiction from "a writer who will make a significant stamp on world literature. In fact, he already has" (Colum McCann, winner of the National Book Award).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCatapult
    Release dateMay 12, 2020
    ISBN9781948226738
    Even the Dogs: A Novel
    Author

    Jon Mcgregor

    Jon McGregor is the author of five novels and two story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award, and has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters. He was born in Bermuda in 1976, grew up in Norfolk, and now lives in Nottingham.

    Read more from Jon Mcgregor

    Related to Even the Dogs

    Related ebooks

    Ghosts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Jeff VanderMeer

      Dec 5, 2017

      As an omnivore, I define the word “enjoyment” as anything from a heady intellectual excitement at exposure to new ideas or narrative structures all the way to an uneasy/comfortable feeling that lives visceral in the gut and defies analysis. I’m not r

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sparks, Glitterballs And Masterworks

      Nov 25, 2021

      IN AN INDUSTRY THAT’S STILL, mostly, too self-consciously classy to give star ratings on its reviews, we nonetheless long to share — just as you demand to know — the best of the best. Is it that book I raved about and you bought but never got around

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Jul 3, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Satire, Sci-fi And A Sting In The Tale

      Nov 30, 2023

      A BOOKISH FRIEND SAID TO ME recently, “It’s been a terrible year for books.” Well, up to a point. The sheer volume of new novels, together with the difficulty of seeing through the thickets of bandwagonesque trendcentred publishing, mean it’s easy to

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Nov 6, 2023

      One of the things I love most is seeing a writer really stretch themselves. This week we have two wonderful books demonstrating vision and skill – a big step up from their authors’ previous works. First up is the profound, hilarious and empathetic Fr

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring James, Li, Wang, McCracken, Bolaño, and More

      Feb 5, 2019

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Marlon James, Yiyun Li, Esmé Weijun Wang, Elizabeth McCracken, Roberto Bolaño, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our m

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian

      Dec 8, 2018

      My 2018 experience, perhaps like everyone else, is much swamped with all sorts of political news that keeps me in dread and panic. As a result, my reading life is divided into three categories: (1.) I consult history-related books to try to understan

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Mamta Chaudhry

      Dec 23, 2020

      At a time when I’m housebound and only my imagination is free to roam, it is head-spinning to read the phrase, “if our life is vagabond our memory is sedentary” and wonder if in our ceaseless rush forward, these are days, too, that will be indelibly

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Sensation

      Aug 23, 2021

      I have a special soft spot for authors who take risks. It would be easy, especially if you’ve had success, to keep turning out similar books, staying within your comfort zone. But the best writers are the ones who move away from the safety net and gi

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dear Mr Fantasy

      Apr 1, 2022

      The best stories throw a wrench in our characters’ best-laid plans, and nobody throws a wrench quite like a ghost. Jevick is the stranger of the title, sold on tales of a wonderland called Olondria in much the way I was sold on the idea of that wonde

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Head Boy And Head-scratchers

      Sep 29, 2022

      AUTUMN IS WHEN THE LITERARY establishment comes out to play, and publishers release books by their most prestigious names. The reasons are lost in time, but it may be connected to the end of summer: fun is over, they say, time to read some serious bo

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Aug 1, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Eight Books That Will Change Your Perspective

      Jul 7, 2024

      An epiphany isn’t always heralded by trumpets or bolts of lightning. I once had a flash of clarity while unlocking my bike: As if I had also unlocked my mind, I suddenly knew that I had to end the relationship I was in. It was one of those rare momen

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Eight Essential Books Set in the Middle of Nowhere

      May 22, 2019

      Turns out, no matter what remote place we wind up, we can’t escape ourselves. The post Eight Essential Books Set in the Middle of Nowhere appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ...and These Were The Favourites Of Readers Around The Country

      Dec 18, 2023

      My favourite book this year is Lilith by @nikkimarmery. At once both accessible and mindblowing, you see the world differently once you’ve heard this story. @sarasheridan Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks will take your breath away. Crooks’ love for an

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Jun 12, 2023

      Books
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Aug 29, 2022

      Discomfited is the best word to describe Ian McEwan’s fictional world. He is the master of the half-surprise, the nightmarish possibilities of the seemingly common character. Mixed with a solid grasp of history and his characters’ places within its t

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 5, 2020

      I decided to map out new avenues for autofiction writers to explore and new variants for autofiction critics to classify: a handy manual that doubles as my year in reading. The post A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Beyond The Burn Line

      Oct 5, 2022

      Beyond The Burn Line
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Newton, Bergman, Folk, and More

      Mar 29, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maud Newton, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Kate Folk, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Newton, Bergman, Folk, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Even the Dogs

    3/5

    149 ratings32 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Even the Dogs takes us into the grimy subculture of heroin addiction in a British urban centre. The story is rudimentary. The body of Robert Radcliffe is discovered in a squalid, chaotic apartment about a week after his death from the accumulated effects of long-term alcohol abuse and general physical neglect. Prior to this event Robert’s apartment was the nexus for a group of addicts to whom he permitted use the place to get high so long as they contributed to the supply of food and drink. But Robert’s death, which happens between Christmas and New Year’s, sends the group scattering into the streets, and once police and a forensics team move in the apartment is off limits. The remainder of the novel chronicles, often in grisly detail, the fates of the addicts as well as the agonizing journey of Robert’s body from point of discovery through to autopsy and, finally, disposal. Jon McGregor’s fiction is routinely cited for bold departures from conventional storytelling strategies and techniques. In Even the Dogs he utilizes a collective narrative voice to depict events as they happen, writing from the perspective of the group of addicts, who serve as a kind of Greek chorus, observing the proceedings from the shadows as police, medical examiners and others go about their business. The novel is at its best when the narrative zeroes in on the individual addicts—Danny, Mike, Ben, Laura, Ant—and we learn how circumstances conspired to lead them down a tragic and desperate path. The novel is densely written in prose that echoes an urban streetwise vernacular, and McGregor conveys, vividly and dispassionately, the painful craving of drug addiction and the catastrophic decisions it forces on its sufferers. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the book also presents a case of technique overwhelming story. After a while the reader longs for a simple, straightforward description or scrap of dialogue that would enable us to connect with a character. The book’s brilliance is that it shows us everything and turns away from nothing. But the tone throughout is clinical, and in the final analysis our response to this novel is blunted by its lack of emotional depth.
    • 3/5
      Some of the descriptions are stomach-churning.
    • 2/5
      Well, this made for somewhat odd Yom Kippur reading. Strong start, strong finish, indifferent middle. Hated, hated, hated the way it was written. I'm all for taking chances with style, but the random sentence fragments were driving me nuts.
    • 3/5
      Grim subject matter but interesting style of writing. Heavy on observation and description, and somewhere in the middle you realise all the different stories being told, hinted at, solidifying almost. Always a sense of waiting, waiting to find out what will happen, what has happened...
    • 1/5
      So this is the first book by Jon Mcgregor that I've attempted to read and I just found it

      This book lacks puntuation and doesn't finish

      I mean try reading it and you will

      If this is his writing syle then I won't
    • 4/5
      I received this book via Goodreads giveaway.

      Not sure what to say. I wouldn't call it an easy or enjoyable reading experience, but I really liked it. Jon McGregor's writing style kept me off-kilter. I was at times disoriented, seemingly lost like the addicts in this book, but an astute reader will eventually be able to sift through all the scattered thoughts and piece together a cohesive story. Well done.

    • 5/5
      Powerful moving book depicting addicts' lives.Begins with the finding of Robert's body in his ruined flat and then recreates his neglected life as those who knew him look on as his body is examined ,investigated and cremated. As they watch their own stories unfurl stories of lives fallen through the cracks.The narrative is cinematic,like a camera sweeping over the horrors.it is non judgemental and compasssionate,structured through unfinished lines and unanswered questions with beautiful prose.I found it powerful and moving and its characters stayed with me long afterwards
    • 3/5
      This experimental novel begins with the death of Richard, an alcoholic middle aged man living in an abandoned flat in an unnamed English town, from unknown causes. A group of people who apprarently know him observe the proceedings, as the police remove his body from the building, and as curious neighbors and onlookers view the spectacle dispassionately.

      The story of Richard's sordid life is told through the stories of those who know him: homeless drug addicts who he allows to stay at his place in exchange for food and drink, and his daughter, who is also addicted to heroin and cocaine and living on the streets, until she also moves into her father's flat. Alongside these stories are descriptive accounts of Richard's trip from the flat to the morgue, the careful cleansing of his body, a clinically precise account of his autopsy, and the inquest process of the coroner, in which his life is summarized and an attempt to understand the causes of his death are made.

      In Even the Dogs, McGregor gives us an unblinking account of the lives of homeless drug addicts in contemporary society. The characters stay mainly out of focus even as they speak, and it was difficult for this reader to appreciate or identify with them. The disjointed writing does coincide with their disjointed lives, and McGregor is successful in portraying the day to day sordid existence of hard core drug addicts and the homeless. This was a tough book to read, and is a difficult one to rate, but I'll settle on a three star rating, and applaud Mr McGregor for this courageous novel.
    • 5/5
      This is a stunning book. It is not an easy read, by any means, because of the subject matter alone. The writing is disjointed and chaotic at times, but this mirrors the events that take shape throughout the story. I can understand why some readers would find this off putting, but I found it totally in keeping.

      It begins with the demise of Robert in a squalid flat. His obese and alcohol ridden body has been there for nearly a week. The narrative belongs to his "friends" who are "watching" the recovery of his body, the journey to the mortuary and a subsequent post mortem. They also keep vigil as his body is transported to the funeral home and is subsequently cremated. Throughout, we are given snippets of how Robert's life used to be and how he descended into alcohol addiction,agorophobia and hopelessness. Where were these friends when Robert died alone? Why was his body not found sooner? These "friends"were the ones who brought him food and alcohol every day in return for a place to doss down and feed their habit. Sounds pretty depressing and it certainly is, but that doesn't mean it is any less realistic. This scene is played out every day throughout the world, where people living on the fringes of society, live from one fix or score to another. Jon McGregor has given these people a voice and it is down to us whether we want to listen and comprehend. Are we disgusted by the behaviour of Robert and his addict companions or do we feel compassion for the situations they are in?

      Robert Radcliffe's story will stay with me for a long time and, if nothing else, I will try to remember that addicts are still someone's son or daughter and it may well be the way the world has treated them which led them to exist as they do.
    • 4/5
      I was leary of reading this book after reading so many reviewers who hated the disjointed writing style. The grim subject matter didn't concern me as much. I should have had my thinking reversed. The writing style was actually beautifuly crafted, well suited to the subject matter of the story. But grim is an understatement. I wasn't expecting how raw this book would leave me feeling. I'm not complaining at all though, in my opinion any book that can give me such an emotional response-even if it's not a happy one- is a rarity any more and much appreciated.
    • 3/5
      My review of Even The Dogs was one that I took under careful consideration. This was an unusual book which, it was clear, would shock some readers, while hitting home with others. In a technical sense, the author shows his mastery of the craft of writing, and his deep understanding of the human condition as it applies to those who frequent the underbelly of society. Is this through a personal acquaintance with a seamy, dark life among the scavengers of a middle class existence, of those who do not "succeed" but chase after the crumbs and detritus of the lives they never quite "managed"? Or does McGregor have the gift of placing himself in the skin of his characters so completely that his stream-of-consciousness dialogue becomes disturbing to the reader? This dialogue, often trailing off mid-sentence, or seeming to lose its focus as it begins another story within a story, is often an indictment of those of us who can observe the "low crawlers" of this society and feel nothing but contempt for their apparent weakness in the face of temptation. In fact, the dialogue is a tool McGregor employs that carries the reader from the scene at hand to events that led to the present catastrophe or dilemma, or has the potential to suggest redemption, just out of reach of the speaker. Some readers may feel only compassion for the ruined lives before them, the bad choices, the potential unrecognized, the humanity withheld, while other readers wonder how to feel pity for these people who choose to live their lives in dirty holes, apartments full of used needles and the vomit of past trips into an ecstasy only felt, never realized in any concrete world? Either way, McGregor has accomplished his task of placing before his readers a world of dark and light, depending from where the reader views it. It is a book filled with only a few days, but days jammed full of the existence of people who fill every minute with a desperation that makes the time seem longer, the end seem closer, the parallels more distant. I think the novel is a success. Its success makes it neither easier to read nor more pleasant for the reader. It makes Jon McGregor a master at manipulating dialogue and characterization into a world clamoring to be remembered, a literary device that allows each reader to carry away from "Even The Dogs" what they will, be it positive or negative. It seems a given that it will not be forgotten easily.
    • 4/5
      I expected this book to be depressing and it was, but also beautifully written. A ghostly group of dead heroin addicts who used to congregate at the shabby apartment of an alcoholic man (Robert) hover above him as his body is found by police. The story moves back and forth in time as Robert's death is investigated and his former companions and addicted daughter tell their stories. The descriptions of their painful, dirty lives punctuated by moments of kindness and compassion and the constant search for more heroin felt real and wretched. They live in a different world, intersecting occasionally with the other world most of us inhabit. Well done, but I had to wait until March to read it.
    • 2/5
      I found Jon McGregor's new novel dull, dull, dull. It's a stream of consciousness story about drug addicts and it's just as unappealing as that sounds. I found it to be a quick read and thank goodness for that, because I don't know how much longer I could have read it if it had been any longer.
    • 3/5
      McGregor plays with the structure of language in his novel "Even The Dogs." This broken structure mirrors the lives of the addicts he portrays. They are without an end, without a resolution.

      The quietly broken lives depicted here do not tell a thrilling, page-turning story. But their determination, desperation, and brittle sense of family stay with the reader long after the reading has ended.
    • 3/5
      This was a difficult read; both in its subject and in its style. Usually, I tend to dismiss the disjointed narrative - stream of consciousness, no punctuation, back and forth in time - as a gimmick, and wish the writer would use his words to capture his audience. It's easier, imo to get and keep them that way. But in the case of Even the Dogs, the disjointed narrative dovetails perfectly with the disjointed lives of its subjects.

      The story begins as a group of people - ghosts, as the cover tells us - are watching as a dead man is removed from his home. We find out quickly that it is not really his home any more; but he remains there after his eviction as it's where he lived with his wife and child before they left him. A hopeless alcoholic, he allows the space to be used by various junkies as a shooting den, as long as they keep him in food (rarely) and booze (often). The cast of characters includes his daughter, Laura, who returned to him as a young teen and promptly became a junkie herself.

      Interspersed through the official dealings of Robert's death - investigation, autopsy, cremation - we see his present and his past, as told by those who are watching. We hear graphic descriptions of addiction, scoring, and withdrawal. In a scene near the end, we are swept briefly through the circumstances of each person's death. Laura, who has survived, has to be fetched from rehab to identify her father and receive the inquest's report of his cause of death.

      Though it was a difficult read - first to adjust to and understand the style, and then to read the subject - ultimately I am glad I read it. I likely won't seek out similar works, but it's a story that can grab at the imagination and the conscience of its readers.
    • 2/5
      Depressing, bleak, disturbing, despairing - just a few adjectives that fail to do justice to this spare, grim book - just reading a few pages set me on edge. I have to ask myself - why did I request this from the Early Reviewers program? It must have been that Jon McGregor is a Booker nominated author? After reading about a third of it I had to stop.
    • 1/5
      I’m one of many LT members that feel they don’t want to know too much about a book before I read it, so when I opted to receive Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor as an ER book, I didn’t know anything about the book. I did know that the author was long listed for the Booker Prize for a previous novel he had written. Let me save all of you who are now reading this review from the torture that is included within the pages of this novel, and I use that term very loosely, for, to call it a novel, is to assume it has a plot. It doesn’t.

      I’ll tell you what it is and then you can decide if you want to expose yourself to this bunch of words on paper pages. Can you say “stream of consciousness”? In dialect??? Grammar and punctuation are foreign to this author for most of the book. Here’s the gist of what goes on: the dead body of an alcoholic is discovered by his friend, a drug addict (Danny). For most of the book he rants about trying to find the alcoholic’s daughter Laura, who is also a drug addict. Interlaced throughout is a great deal of profanity. Oh yeah, also looking on as Danny goes on and on all over the place looking for Laura, from one street corner and run down building to another, are all his friends. And they add to the stream of consciousness too. However, they are all also dead.
      Finally, there is a coroner’s inquest and for this McGregor reverts to a script like dialogue such as:

      Coroner: He hadn’t said anything about wanting to stop drinking?
      Laura: No, only (inaudible).
      Coroner: Only what?
      Laura: Only, I mean, he knew about me going to rehab, he found out about it like. I told him, I mean. He might have thought, after that, you know.

      You get the idea. Unless you prefer the stream of consciousness:

      “So that’s all it was I wasn’t trying to shaft you, you know that la, you know I wouldn’t do that, it was just, it was just a pure out-of-necessity thing you know what I’m saying it was just, only it turned Benny boy was wrong and them blokes didn’t turn up neither, but still like it was I had the best of intentions it was out of necessity it was the mother of what is it like you know what I’m saying la”

      Right.

      Mercifully the book is short (less than 200 pages). That is it’s only redeeming quality. So be my guest; maybe this is your cup of tea. For me it was like bamboo under the fingernails.
    • 3/5
      McGregor's 'Even the dogs' centers around a group of heroin addicted derelicts. Written in short snippets McGregor jumps from character to character but the plot mainly centers around Robert who the police have found dead in his squat and it seems that Robert is more an alcoholic who allows junkies (one of whom is his daughter Laura) to use his apartment at the price of keeping him in booze and food.

      More or less the book describes the kind of lifestyle--of begging, violence and stealing that becomes an everyday price of (short term) survival. You could say it's a very loosely confederated subculture of hustlers and victims. There's an almost terse quality to his descriptions which reminds me of the aftermath of a hangover. Like maybe you're up and about but really need another hour or two of sleep. At times McGregor's prose has a flow but it never really sustains itself. There is enough insight though to keep things moving along towards the something that is the end--more or less an autopsy hearing in which Laura is questioned about her father's last moments.

      Did I like it? Not particularly. I've read other works about junkies and more often than not they have a tendency to peter out like this one. It's a hard thing to sell and whether I liked it or not I would still have to say that McGregor is a talented writer--but maybe he needs a different subject matter.
    • 3/5
      Like many other reviewers, I found the stream-of-consciousness style interesting but ultimately distracting and difficult, making the novel surprisingly challenging to finish. The multiple points of view were confusing. I did enjoy the way the narrative was pieced together from many images and incidents, but would have enjoyed the book more if the writing felt less gimmicky.
    • 2/5
      This was a story of hopeless struggle with addiction and loss. I found this to be a difficult read. I had to force myself to continue. The multiple character points of view were interesting, but at times confusing. I was unable to really connect with any of these characters and the lack of dialogue made reading tedious. The novel was well written and gave great imagery, but overall an unimpressive read.
    • 3/5
      This was a hard one for me to read, so graphic in its detail that I found it spilling over into my dream life. I guess that says a lot for the authors ability to make his language come alive and form pictures. Only his characters were not so much about life, as about life lost. And lost. And lost.
      I liked the style of writing very much and found it to be as different as Frey's "Million Little Pieces", also coincidentally about addiction.
      This is not a book I would go out of my way to recommend because of its intensity; but I think the author is brilliant.
    • 2/5
      It is rare that I don't finish a book. I couldn't finish this one.

      I think it’s well written, but it’s not a story I connected with. I could not relate to the characters or situations, and I found myself dreading each new page as I read. I did not want to delve deeper into this world.

      I don’t often choose books about addiction, pain, or death; I don’t choose books that are gritty or disjointed. This book was not for me.
    • 3/5
      This was a very difficult book to read. McGregor is raw, graphic, and unrelenting in his portrayal of the horrors of drug addiction. The story follows a group of heroin addicts in an unnamed English town. In the days following Christmas each of them dies from drug-related causes, and the book follows in particular the authorities' investigation of the death of one of them, a man named Robert, who lost all of the normalcy in his life, including his wife and daughter, as he fell into the arms of addiction. The story is narrated by the various characters, some during their lives, and others in death. They follow the investigation of Robert's death in all of its horrors. As the book unfolds we learn how Robert and his friends became drug addicts, and how each met their end. This book is nothing, if not hard-hitting. McGregor writes in the voice of drug addicts in a stream-of-consciousness style. The prose is sometimes difficult to get through: there's plenty of slang and jargon. Even more so, the book itself is hard to get through because it is so graphic and so tragic. Certainly McGregor captures the incessant search for drugs that defines the addict's life. Indeed, the book is itself is unrelenting in illustrating this, as the characters' lives have become entirely defined by the search for the next hit. For all that is remarkable about this book, I was left with little at the end aside from a sense of depression. Many of the finest works of literature are written about extreme human misery, but they leave the reader with larger lessons, things to consider, and that was missing here. At the end there was little left but sadness.
    • 3/5
      I thought the author did a good job of depicting the junkie, addicted life. I did not like the style but it did fit the subject manner. I admire the author's creativity but I don't think you needed 195 pages to tell this story. The emotional tone was set in the beginning and never changed. I think the depiction would have worked better as part of a larger more varied story. Not sure if I would read anything else by this author.
    • 2/5
      "Even the Dogs" chronicles the lives (and after-lives, in some cases) of a group of homeless heroin addicts.

      I am torn on how to review this very dark and depressing book. On the one hand, the story, told from the perspective of the addicts, is extremely disjointed and difficult to follow. The descriptions of heroin use, the early symptoms of withdrawal, and the struggle to survive long enough to find the next fix are vivid and disturbing. On the other hand, the manner in which Jon McGregor captures the voice of the characters is nothing short of genius.

      In short, not my cup of tea, but this book and its author definitely deserve kudos.
    • 4/5
      I'm not even sure what to say ... the writing is grim and disjointed, and there is no happy ending, but something about Even The Dogs kept me reading. This was not something I would have necessarily picked up on my own, but it did get my curious about Jon McGregor's other works.
    • 3/5
      Grim. Depressing. The story of a group of heroin addicts, alcoholics, psychopaths, and street people. The injection of heroin is described in disturbing detail. Not exactly Dickens’ Drood in the opium den. Dickens softened the impact of Drood’s drug use by including his characteristic virgin female and comic relief. There is no softening of anything in “Even the Dogs”. Don’t even wish for a happy ending. Nobody gets out of this one alive or recovered or even with any hope.

      Which is not to say that the writing is not good. I think it is. The author does an excellent job of portraying the single-minded obsession of the addicts with acquiring their next fix, at whatever cost. I question the decision to turn this into a novel. There is quite a bit of repetition. Considering the distasteful subject matter I wonder why it wasn’t shortened and presented as, for instance, the centerpiece of a short story collection, including other stories that could have buffered the hopelessness of “Even the Dogs”. I can’t see this selling many copies or being commercially successful as a novel.

      One thing that the author does which is interesting is the inclusion of a “Greek Chorus” of dead addicts that comment on the action and scenes. That is the basic structure of the novel. One of the group has died alone in what we in the US would call a “crack house” and a small amount of backstory is woven into the narrative and commented on by the chorus as the body is discovered and autopsied.

      So, I have to give it a good rating because of the fine writing, but I would not recommend this to any but the most hardened of readers.
    • 4/5
      Wow this book knocked me for a loop! After reading the first couple of pages I kept thinking - ok, when is the description going to end and the story start. I even looked ahead to see if it was still the same type of writing throughout the book. It was really hard to get into at first but let me say that it totally captured me! The horror of these characters lives was so gut wrenchingly honest that it was almost painful to read. I actually couldn't put it down once my brain could get used to the writing style. I kept thinking "this is what a screenplay must sound like"

      This book should almost be required reading for teenagers in high risk situations. I felt like I was going through the streets with Danny trying to get the gear! If only everyone could read this book and realize what a nightmare addiction is. I would really like to seek out Jon McGregor's other novels because he is brilliant.
    • 4/5
      Even The Dogs (Jon McGregor) is like. What. Nelson Algren. William Burroughs. This is the end of the alley. The bottom of the dumpster. Most everyone will be, like Robert, going out feet first. Maybe we all will. At any rate it's rough, with a four-day stubble. The Greek chorus of addicts and damaged children, will tug at you. These are lost souls. Souls lost in the shadows. Yet, McGregor makes them human. No small task. They bleed. They yearn.

      Years after his wife had left him because of his excessive drinking (taking the child), Robert was evicted from his apartment. He still lives there. He doesn't get out much. At least he lived there until the smell got too bad. For the neighbors that is. Dead and decomposing sometime over Christmas, the police finally break down the door and discover the sad end of Robert John Radcliffe.

      Robert wasn't a druggie, but he surrounded himself with them, using his place as a shooting gallery and crash pad. The cast of characters includes many who have been physically and psychologically damaged in wars: Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ireland.

      Purposefully disjointed and choppy (it's particularly jarring when sentences atop...mid-sentence), scenes fade into and out of one another, through time, through space. The soundtrack for this novel would be Lou Reed. Think Street Hassle or Heroin. There's a particularly lovely riff a little over mid-way through. Ant has a damaged limb (courtesy of Helmand province, Afghanistan). Steve had once found himself on a particularly dangerous mission to Bosnia. Headed for a particular town, he's stopped by the police and told he can't go there: Even the dogs are dead. Even the bloody dogs. Steve's telling Ant his story, as Ant plunges the needle into Steve's vein. Ant remembers the Land Rover he'd been in being blown into the sky, and he remembers himself

      "lying in a field beside a road with the plants flattened beneath him as if he'd fallen from the sky. None of the pain he would have expected. Not yet.....only this whispering numbness, this stunned state in which it takes him a moment to understand where he is...[a roadside bomb has] lifted him from the surface of the earth and hurled him down into this field of waist-high stalks. The flower heads looking down at him where he lies, waiting. For someone to come...the blue sky. The poppies. The nodding poppy heads..."

      The images of the poppies and the heroin fix cannot be lost on anyone. Besides the grit and grime and despair of the drug scene, the novel gives us a bit of procedural. There's an autopsy that may well be too graphic for many readers, but it has a rigorous sense of propriety and order. This is followed by the Coroner's inquest.

      For the denizens of Robert's place, days are planned with an eye toward getting enough money for the next score. Panhandle, score, lift a little, score, One day bleeds into another. There's only one reason for living. The next score, the next high. Which necessitates the next score, the next high. Yet, as McGregor writes, "time seems to pass."

      As I mentioned to a friend of mine, McGregor's novel is just about the perfect length. You can give it a go in one sitting. But really, you wouldn't want to spend more time with these people than that.
    • 3/5
      I just finished reading Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor. Grim. Hard to read. Fragmented. And well done. I really liked that the arc of the story was the discovery of one man's death, including the following police and coroner investigation and inquest. Interspersed with that were the voices of his friends and family, such as they were, mostly in drug induced states of panic, fear and loneliness.

      This was a bit darker (okay, a LOT darker) than I usually read.

    Book preview

    Even the Dogs - Jon Mcgregor

    INTRODUCTION

    BY YIYUN LI

    I have been thinking lately of a verdict given to the adult world by a young girl in Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows. Mary had once said . . . that the adjectives which really suited grown-ups were ‘lily-livered’ and ‘chicken-hearted.’ At the risk of making a disputable comment, I wonder if, compared to the West characters from a century ago, we may be more than ever afflicted by this disease of lily-livered-ness and chicken-hearted-ness, at least in our literary taste. Oftentimes a reviewer feels the urge to warn the readers that such and such a book is not for the faint-hearted—as though it’s literature’s job to put a cautious finger on the readers’ pulses. Woe to those sacrificed maidens in Greek tragedies and lopped-off heads in Shakespeare plays that fail to bear a sign, trigger warning.

    The Greeks and Shakespeare, of course, are still being read, perhaps for the reason that it’s easy to forget that they were about real people who once lived. Thank goodness we have books like Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs, a reminder that true literature does not avert its eyes from anything difficult.

    The novel is narrated by a group of characters, some named, others unseen but to themselves. Together they are known—because society must offer a label for them—as drug addicts, alcoholics, and homeless people. It may be easy to compare the group we to the chorus in a Greek tragedy, but the novel does not allow the readers to find a retreat in the realm of myths, fairy tales, or fantasies. We are, of course, familiar with the gritty and gory images, which are often seen these days on screen—with perfect makeup and the right music so well done that the audience can keep an aesthetic and psychological distance. But McGregor’s novel, with its uncompromising gaze at unadorned details of life and death, eliminates that safe distance between the characters and the readers. Who can say he or she is guaranteed to be free from the characters’ fates? A reader who waves a white flag of lily-livered-ness and chicken-hearted-ness even before opening the book, perhaps.

    The novel opens on a winter day that a body is discovered in an unheated flat, and is unfolded as the narrators follow the body from the flat to the mortuary, watch it being examined by the coroner and then prepared for cremation, and, holding a wake while remaining entirely invisible to the world, search in their own muddled minds for clarity. The only character that progresses lineally in time is the body, as the dead no longer has the means to change his own destination. This reliable odyssey anchors the readers as it anchors the narrators, whose relationship with time is much murkier. But that, even for those in the direst situation, is a privilege. Time works magic—a cliché, yet time, for the living characters as well as for the readers, does hold the unexpected and the unreliable: it circles, superimposes, inlays, and traverses back and forth in years. Like memory, but even less subjected to anyone’s control.

    The setting of the novel is an unspecified city in England, but it may as well be set in a town in Ohio or on a street in Chicago. No one needs a passport or a legal document to cross the border between hope and despair, between forgetting and remembering, between life and death, or, perhaps more relevant for the characters (and the readers, too), between desire and addiction. So often is addiction portrayed as a result of poverty or hopelessness, or, in kinder hands, a mental illness. McGregor has not limited himself to those easy answers. He has shown something else—messier, yet more intense—at work: the desire to feel. Can any reader look into his or her own mind and deny the presence of that desire entirely?

    Even the Dogs deservedly won IMPAC Dublin Award in 2012. One can go on talking about McGregor’s other brilliant books, including his latest, Reservoir 13 and The Reservoir Tapes. But what strikes me most is his intelligence, which one senses vividly in his prose, and his empathy, which he’s given entirely to his characters, rather, say, the readers or the publishers. That, to my mind, makes a superb writer rather than a gifted caterer.

    September 2019

    One

    They break down the door at the end of December and carry the body away.

    The air is cold and vice-like, the sky a scouring steel-eyed blue, the trees bleached bone-white in the frosted light of the sun. We stand in a huddle by the bolted door.

    The street looks quiet, from here. Steam billows and sighs from a central-heating flue. A television flickers in a room next door. Someone hammers at a fencing post on the far side of the playing fields behind the flats.

    An overflow pipe with a fat lip of melting ice drips on to the walkway from three floors up, the water pooling and freezing in the shade of a low brick wall.

    Cars drive past, from time to time, their windows fogged and their engines straining against the cold.

    We see someone getting out of a taxi parked further up the hill. She leaves the door open, and we see two carrier bags stuffed full of clothes and books and make-up on the back seat. She comes up the short flight of steps, and bangs on the door. This is Laura. She shouts through the letterbox. She gestures for the taxi-driver to wait, and goes round to the side of the building. We see her climbing on to a garage roof and in through the kitchen window of the flat. She stands in the kitchen for a few moments. She looks like she’s talking to someone. She climbs out again, drops down from the garage roof, and gets back into the taxi.

    Later, in the evening of the same day or the day after that, with the other flats glowing yellow and blue from behind thin curtains and pinned-up sheets, we see Mike scrambling up on to the garage roof. We hear shouting, and something being broken. We see Ben, running down the hill towards town.

    We see Heather, another morning, hauling herself up the steps and banging on the door, an opened can in one hand. She shouts through the letterbox and looks through the glass. The old woman from the flat next door comes out and says something. They argue, and Heather bangs on the door again before walking off down the hill towards town.

    We see Mike, talking on his phone, his long coat flapping around his knees as he strides out into the road.

    The streetlamps come on, slowly, glowing red and then orange and then flickering out again as the dawn unfurls. Frost forms across the playing fields and the grass verges, and is smudged by footprints and tyres and the weak light of the distant sun. Time seems to pass.

    We see Danny, running across the playing fields with Einstein limping along behind him. We peer round the corner of the flats and see him climbing on to the roof of the garages. Einstein looks up, barking and scrabbling at the garage door, and we hear the creak of a window being opened.

    The old man in the wheelchair appears. We know him but we don’t know his name. He’s not even that old but it’s something to call him. He inches along the pavement, gripping the wheels with hands wrapped in rags and unravelling gloves, his face twisting with the effort of each small push. Grunting faintly as he goes. Huh. Hah. Huh. He glances towards us but he doesn’t stop. Huh. Hah. Huh.

    The window opens again, and we see Danny jumping from the roof of the garages, falling, landing awkwardly and stumbling when he tries to get up. He picks up his bag and his blankets and he hurries away down the road towards town, passing the old man in the wheelchair and calling Einstein to follow him, his blankets slung over his shoulder and trailing along the ground and he doesn’t look behind him as he goes.

    It gets dark, and light, and dark again, and we wonder whether anyone else will come. There are more of us now, and we stand in silence by the door, looking up and down the road.

    There’s no siren when the police finally arrive. They drive slowly up the hill, peering out from the window at the numbered street signs. They pull over at the bottom of the steps and sit there for a few moments with the engine running, talking on their radios.

    Someone looks out of a window on the first floor and turns away, pulling the curtains closed.

    The front door of the next flat along opens slightly.

    The two policemen get out of the car, rubbing their gloved hands together, squinting against the cold and the low late-afternoon sun. One of them, a young-looking man with pale blue eyes and a thin nose, goes to the boot and takes out a pair of long torches. They walk carefully up to the flat, avoiding the ice creeping down the steps, and we move away from the door. Their breath clouds around their faces and trails off into the air.

    The door of the next flat opens further, and an old woman appears. She watches the two men shine their torches through the glass panels of the front door and shout through the letterbox. She’s wearing a checked dressing gown, and a pair of slippers in the shape of tiger’s paws. She says something to them, folding her arms. The younger policeman turns to her and nods, and when she says something more they ignore her.

    A car slows as it passes, stopping for a moment and then driving on.

    What took them so long. Where were they.

    They test the door with their shoulders, and then the younger policeman steps back and kicks at the lock. The door falls open. They both move forward, and turn away again, covering their noses and mouths. They look at each other, and lift their torches to shine a narrow light into the flat’s dark hall. The old woman shuffles closer, hugging her arms a little tighter around her chest, and we look past her into the torchlit gloom. The place is a mess, but we knew that already. The walls are scribbled-over and stained, bare wires hanging from the rotten plaster. The floor is covered with bottles and cans and blankets and clothes, a pile of car tyres, shards of glass. And there must be a foul smell, the two men’s hands still pressed over their noses and mouths and their faces still half turned away. The younger man coughs, as though something is sticking in the back of his throat. The older man puts a hand to his colleague’s arm, speaking quietly.

    They don’t see us, as we crowd and push around them. Of course they don’t. How could they. But we’re used to that. We’ve been used to that for a long time, even before. Before this.

    Their boots crunch and snap on the debris-covered floor. They walk slowly, and they let the light of their torches lead the way. They call out, something like Hello, police, hello. They glance at each other, and they move further into the flat.

    The younger man, turning right at the end of the hall where his colleague has turned left, finds the body lying on the sitting room floor. He looks for no more than a second or two, his eyes widening, and then he calls out, backing away, clamping his fist over his mouth. The older man comes through from the kitchen, his feet grinding across more broken glass as he steps past into the sitting room and sees what’s there. He flinches slightly, and nods. He shines a torch over the body, the damp clothes, the broken and blistered flesh. He points out something that looks like blood, puddled across the lino, a trail of it leading into the kitchen. The younger man, still standing in the doorway, speaks into his radio, asking for something. They don’t speak. They wait. They look at the body. We all crowd into the room and look at the body. The swollen and softening skin, the sunken gaze, the oily pool of fluids spreading across the floor. The twitch and crawl of newly hatched life, feeding.

    It’s Robert. But we knew that already.

    The sky is darkening outside, a faint red smudge along the treeline by the river, the clouds stretching low and thin towards the ground.

    The older policeman tugs at his shirt collar, pulling his tie away from his neck, muttering something to his colleague as he pushes past, leading the way down the cluttered hallway and out into the cold clean air.

    Outside, the woman with the tiger-paw slippers and the checked dressing gown is waiting. She asks something, and they hold up their hands and shake their heads. The older man fetches a roll of blue-and-white tape from the car and cordons off the area around the door. The woman watches them, chewing the inside of her lip. Her skin is dry and loose on her face, gathered in small folds around her jaw. She talks to the younger policeman for a few moments, shaking her head, peering past him towards the open door. She turns, and shuffles back to her flat.

    The two men stand in front of the cordon. A fluorescent light on the wall above them buzzes faintly as it warms up. Lights flicker on along the walkway, a few at a time. The sky darkens to a bruised purple. The men stamp their feet and rub their hands to keep away the cold, and they talk. We look up and down the street, and Danny tells us what it was like when he found him, when he climbed in through the window at the back of the flat and found Robert laid out on the floor.

    Penny standing in the doorway, shivering and looking up while Danny climbed in through the kitchen window and jumped down on the floor. Didn’t see her at first, and when he did he couldn’t understand why she weren’t yapping like usual, why she was standing so still. Just like trembling and that. Knew something was wrong straight off, it was too quiet. Never been quiet like that before. Always been Penny and the other dogs barking and music playing and people shouting to make themselves heard. Penny didn’t even turn when he went past. Didn’t have the strength. Bag of bones. Just stood there and Danny come rushing back out the room and puked on the floor before climbing straight out the window and he didn’t look back.

    Three more vehicles pull up outside the flat. This is later. The woman with the tiger-paw slippers has brought the men two mugs of tea, asked questions they decline to answer, and taken the empty mugs away. A group of children have gathered by the flat, trying to see past the policemen and into the hallway, trying to duck under the cordon. But they’re gone now, and it’s quiet. A man and a woman get out of the first vehicle and carry cases of equipment up the steps, talking to the policemen while they climb into rustling white overalls and pull on clear plastic gloves. A woman in jeans and a long grey coat comes up the steps, carrying a small leather bag. Two men take lights and tripods from the back of another van and stack them at the top of the steps. They all take a pair of plastic foot-covers from a box, balancing on one leg and then the other to slip the elasticated cuffs over their shoes while the younger policeman writes their names in a logbook, their breaths steaming above them and yellowing in the fluorescent light.

    The woman with the small leather bag goes into the flat, through the hall and into the room where Robert’s body lies. She crouches beside him, touching his cold skin, noting the sunken eyes and swollen lips, the insects, the weeping blisters up and down his body. She nods, checking her watch and writing something in a hardback notebook or diary, telling the policeman what time to write in his notes as she leaves, ducking under the cordon, peeling off her gloves and walking quickly down the steps to her car. She puts her bag down on the passenger seat and turns on the radio. She looks at her mobile phone, a blue glow shining on her face, and then she puts it back in her bag and drives away.

    The men with the lights go inside and set them up against the walls, keeping well away from the body, connecting the battery packs and the clamps, and suddenly the room is huge with light, with a bright white light which erupts out of each corner and fixes every wriggling detail into place. The man and woman in white overalls come into the room, joined by another man with a thick tangle of dark hair who looks like he might be in charge. The first man takes photographs while the woman looks carefully over the body, pulling Robert’s clothes away from his neck, combing her gloved fingers through his hair and picking through the mess on the floor. She shows the photographer the dark bloodstains trailing across the lino. The younger policeman stands in the hallway, watching, and the man with the dark tangled hair asks him questions. He shakes his head, gesturing towards the front door, smiling briefly at some comment made by the photographer, and for a moment the room feels crowded again, crowded like it was the last time we were all here together with Robert stretched out on the floor the way he always was by the end of the night, with that look on his face he only ever got when he was sleeping. And there he is, snoring, spluttering, reaching out a hand behind his head like he’s looking for something to hold on to. One of us, Heather probably, leaning forward to pull his coat more snugly across his broad chest, his shoulders, tucking his hat back on to his head until she sees the rest of us watching. The rest of us sleeping. Danny and Ben and Laura and Mike and Ant and whoever else happened to be around. Or not quite sleeping but closing our eyes and listening to the music coming from the taped-up stereo in the kitchen, some broken-beated lullaby holding us up against the walls and against each other, while our hands fall open and spill the spoons and pipes and empty cans, the scraps of foil and paper and cotton wool. Our crumbs of comfort scattering across the floor. Our open hands.

    A phone rings, and the policeman standing by the door pulls it from his pocket, gesturing to the others before ducking out of the room to speak, out through the ruined hallway and the battered front door, and as the door closes behind him we see Robert, and Yvonne, working back to back as they take down the old wallpaper, peeling and picking at it with a paint-scraper and a knife, small curls and flakes falling to the floor like confetti. Sitting by the open front door to eat ham-and-tomato sandwiches and watch children run up and down the steps. Hanging the new paper over the torn remains of the old, measuring and cutting and pasting, the afternoon passing away while they talk or don’t talk or sing along with the radio, and by teatime the last corner of paper is finally smoothed into place, the aching in their arms and their necks rushing up on them both as they stand back to look at their work, their hands sticky with wallpaper paste and sweat.

    We never met Yvonne but we see her now. We see things differently now. We see them clearing away the traces of whoever had lived there before, painting and papering over the cracks. Throwing out the things left behind, the stacked magazines and hoarded tins, the rusted mousetraps in the cupboard under the sink. The simple acts of two people making a home together. Bringing new furniture in through the narrow doorway: a bed, an armchair, a sofa, a chest of

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1