Even the Dogs - Hardcover

Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin, and winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham. Even the Dogs is his third novel.

This mercifully short third novel from McGregor (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things) is told from the various perspectives of a loosely connected band of down-and-outers linked by Robert, a hopeless alcoholic whose wife has taken their daughter and left him alone in his flat, which has since become a gathering place for the members of McGregor's cast. Robert's death sets in motion the novel's events—it would be misleading to call it a plot—starting with the police taking away his body. For the most part, we're with Danny, whose past gradually comes to light via an expletive-laced narration that verges on incoherence: his foster home upbringing; his relationship with Robert's daughter, Laura, whom Danny is trying to contact; and of course, his heroin addiction, which provides much of the novel's subject matter. In the process, we learn about the group that frequented Robert's flat, a motley crew who provide plenty of sordid stories. But the central mystery—how did Robert die?—goes nowhere, and the spliced-in set pieces that describe the stages Robert's body undergoes on its way to eventual cremation don't do any favors for this misfire. (Feb.)
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