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Even the Dogs
by
Jon McGregor
Denis Johnson meets David Mitchell 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 remote corners of the city. Victims of heroin overdose, they’re in t...more
Kindle Edition
Published
(first published 2010)
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Bear with me
We won this book. We felt we had to read it. The second person plural POV was distracting and the random stream of consciousness made it an easy but not exactly enjoyable read. We didn't appreciate the fractured sentence structure or starting thoughts and sentences and occasionally never finishing those thoughts and sentences. Our assessment of
Karen's excitement for it made us move it to the top of our to-read pile. Pancakes. We had high hopes for
Sentences would start but never
And...more
We won this book. We felt we had to read it. The second person plural POV was distracting and the random stream of consciousness made it an easy but not exactly enjoyable read. We didn't appreciate the fractured sentence structure or starting thoughts and sentences and occasionally never finishing those thoughts and sentences. Our assessment of
Karen's excitement for it made us move it to the top of our to-read pile. Pancakes. We had high hopes for
Sentences would start but never
And...more
43 likes · like · see review
view all 29 comments
There are some spoilers in this review but hardly more than revealed in the blurb on the cover.
Some of the reviews of even the dogs criticise the unusual style, the frequent shifts in point of view, the sentences which peter out in mid stride and the mixed-up chronology but in my opinion, Jon McGregor has chosen the most fitting way to tell this story. From the title to the last line, it is all perfect.
Here’s why.
The title, itself a fragment, refers to a comment by a soldier in Bosnia who, when...more
Some of the reviews of even the dogs criticise the unusual style, the frequent shifts in point of view, the sentences which peter out in mid stride and the mixed-up chronology but in my opinion, Jon McGregor has chosen the most fitting way to tell this story. From the title to the last line, it is all perfect.
Here’s why.
The title, itself a fragment, refers to a comment by a soldier in Bosnia who, when...more
10 likes · like · see review
I'm so happy I never got a job as chief book reviewer for The Times or The London Review of Printed Material, because I would then feel a moral duty to finish all these novels like Even the Dogs which are brave, beautifully written and speak compellingly to the heart of our current crisis, which are poetic yet visceral, brutal yet tender, an obvious shoo in for the Booker, and so on.
As you know, with some books you get to the point where you have to hurl them at the wall, but this one I placed a...more
As you know, with some books you get to the point where you have to hurl them at the wall, but this one I placed a...more
9 likes · like · see review
As I started the second chapter of this novel, the style reminded me of McGregor's first novel (as opposed to his second, that is - this one is his third) which was exciting, but I quickly realized it was quite different. So far, this novelist hasn't repeated himself.
While not a difficult book to read as far as the prose (even if much of it is fragmented thoughts and some of it told in the 2nd-person plural, which works very well especially as you realize the reason), it can be difficult to read...more
While not a difficult book to read as far as the prose (even if much of it is fragmented thoughts and some of it told in the 2nd-person plural, which works very well especially as you realize the reason), it can be difficult to read...more
7 likes · like · see review
I rated this 4 stars, but 'liked it' somehow seems an inappropriate description for how I felt it. It's not easy reading, but it's very worthwhile...
It probably wasn’t meant to, but Even the Dogs made me feel sorry for the social workers and police trying to deal with the human misery in this story.
A man has died one of those squalid deaths we hear about from time to time, and in a scene that we’ve all seen in TV crime dramas, the old cop and the young cop have to break down the door of a trash...more
It probably wasn’t meant to, but Even the Dogs made me feel sorry for the social workers and police trying to deal with the human misery in this story.
A man has died one of those squalid deaths we hear about from time to time, and in a scene that we’ve all seen in TV crime dramas, the old cop and the young cop have to break down the door of a trash...more
6 likes · like · see review
read a review this weekend, sounds good, although not sure about using first person plural as the p.o.v. - I was railing against Nancy Lee using 'you' recently... we'll see. We will. We are looking forward to it. We liked 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable things'.
...review to follow (although I'm falling behind on reviews I will catch up one day)
Later I read Michelle's review of this book: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and thought oh dear, maybe it will be a disaster. But I disagree - t...more
...review to follow (although I'm falling behind on reviews I will catch up one day)
Later I read Michelle's review of this book: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and thought oh dear, maybe it will be a disaster. But I disagree - t...more
Best thing about the book was the courageous attempt at the narrative style McGregor employs for the novella. Hadn't read a book with this narrative style before and it engaged me for 60-70 pages but then began to lose its grip. Better for a short-story maybe but the narrative style does capture the helplessness the characters feel towards the main protagonist of the story - if there is one. I have read a lot of negative reviews particularly towards McGregor's efforts to capture the bleakness of...more
I feel - as I did with If Nobody Speaks - that I need to re-read this once or twice to fully appreciate all the layers of it.
I spent half of it stunned by McGregor's capable skill, and the other half struck by how genuinely important this book is. Even The Dogs is not an easy book to read. It's not a particularly fun book to read. But this tale of despair and vulnerability and deep desperation is the kind of story that needs to be more widely read. McGregor pulls you into this world of addicts:...more
I spent half of it stunned by McGregor's capable skill, and the other half struck by how genuinely important this book is. Even The Dogs is not an easy book to read. It's not a particularly fun book to read. But this tale of despair and vulnerability and deep desperation is the kind of story that needs to be more widely read. McGregor pulls you into this world of addicts:...more
This book takes its place as the king of the junkie fiction genre alongside other notables like Trainspotting, Drugstore Cowboy, Reqiuiem For A Dream and Naked Lunch.
It is a difficult read sometimes, written in a stream of consciousness, with paragraphs left dangling from the edge of abandoned ending sentences. But, it becomes a part of the dialogue and flow after a moment, and causes the reader to hurtle along in the same ugly rush as the wasted characters.
I thought it was an incisive and succ...more
It is a difficult read sometimes, written in a stream of consciousness, with paragraphs left dangling from the edge of abandoned ending sentences. But, it becomes a part of the dialogue and flow after a moment, and causes the reader to hurtle along in the same ugly rush as the wasted characters.
I thought it was an incisive and succ...more
Robert Radcliffe's body is found at home. Discovered by a myriad of the dropouts who use his residence as a safe place to congregate and shoot up or take slugs of drink. Robert's life has fallen apart when his wife and daughter leave him and his own alcoholism rages on unabated, but he likes the company of these waifs and strays, including his own teenage daughter who returns to him as a junky. Against the backdrop of what happens to his body in death, we get various stream of consciousness poin...more
This is not an easy book. It concerns a man found dead in his flat and the circle of friends/ acquaintances who surround him. It has elements of stream of consciousness and can be disjointed. In former times it would have been called gritty and "real". It is about the underbelly of our society; alcoholics and drug addicts; the abandoned and hopeless who can be found in every town and city in this land. Some of the characters in the book are ex-military who cope with post traumatic stress by subs...more
At the tail end of last year, I read Jon McGregor’s piece in the BBC National Short Story Award anthology, and liked it very much. After that, I was bound to read one of his novels at some point; Even the Dogs is on the current TV Book Club list, so now seems as good a time as any. The distinctive style and facility with language that I found in the story are here again in this novel, yet I don’t find myself quite as enthusiastic this time around.
In the final week of the year, the body of an alc...more
In the final week of the year, the body of an alc...more
This short novel opens with a dead body being carried out of a derelict flat. The body is that of Robert, an alcoholic who has lived in squalor for years, visited only by the junkies who brought him food in exchange for a place to gather to share their � gear.� We don� t initially know how he died, but over the course of the book we learn about the events leading up to his death and about the lives of those who knew him.[return][return]Even the Dogs doesn� t really have a plot to speak of. The c...more
I read If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (http://marcusgipps.livejournal.com/32...) a few years ago, and rather enjoyed it (although I thought it perhaps wasn't quite as good as everybody had told me it was). I planed to see what McGregor did next, but for some reason his second book, So Many Ways to Begin, completely passed me by. So when my Bloomsbury rep gave me this, I figured it was a good contender for the non-SF holiday pile. It didn't hurt that, being a thin book, I assumed I'd be ab...more
Jan 25, 2010
Jennifer
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-fiction
Story Overview
During the Christmas holidays, a man is found dead in his flat. It appears he has been there for quite some time. The flat is squalid, filthy, empty of most things you would expect. The man's body is in bad shape. The police are unsure if there has been foul play and begin an investigation. Who is this man? How did he come to by lying here ... dead and apparently neglected ... in this seemingly abandoned apartment?
There are voices who could shed light on this mystery. They seem to...more
During the Christmas holidays, a man is found dead in his flat. It appears he has been there for quite some time. The flat is squalid, filthy, empty of most things you would expect. The man's body is in bad shape. The police are unsure if there has been foul play and begin an investigation. Who is this man? How did he come to by lying here ... dead and apparently neglected ... in this seemingly abandoned apartment?
There are voices who could shed light on this mystery. They seem to...more
3 likes · like · see review
the horror of addiction-- I was completely engaged in this heartbreaking story of heroin use and isolation. The mates of an alcoholic, Robert, use his flat to shoot heroin and cling to life. The author employs fresh, erratic sentences that give perfect voice to their desperate lives. I was very moved by the characters' longings to be touched- be it by a visit to the chiropodist, or hairdresser, or when injecting each other.
"Same with having a dig. When someone else does it, and even the most cac...more
"Same with having a dig. When someone else does it, and even the most cac...more
Stunning.
Where do I start?
Firstly, for the relatively rare thing (in British fiction) that is taking on a contemporary, marginal, anything-but-feelgood setting and sub-class, and handling it with great depth and empathy. This is a novel about junkies and alcoholics; damaged and self-damaging. It's not sentimental (most of them are fuckers), but it's very observant and truthful.
Secondly, the style - authentic and for-a-reason. Those non-sequiturs, shifts and sudden stops (lines like 'He did and...more
Where do I start?
Firstly, for the relatively rare thing (in British fiction) that is taking on a contemporary, marginal, anything-but-feelgood setting and sub-class, and handling it with great depth and empathy. This is a novel about junkies and alcoholics; damaged and self-damaging. It's not sentimental (most of them are fuckers), but it's very observant and truthful.
Secondly, the style - authentic and for-a-reason. Those non-sequiturs, shifts and sudden stops (lines like 'He did and...more
This book chilled me to the bone, quite literally: I felt physically cold and nauseous whilst reading. Jane Austen it ain't. Inevitably it draws comparison with 'Trainspotting', and McGregor is well aware of this ("Like, fucking, what was it, take the best orgasm you've ever had and multiply it by a hundred.") but there is no comedy here, black or otherwise. Just an endless desperation to fill the yawning chasm of human loneliness that means that, if we're honest, most of us are probably only a...more
I came away haunted by this book. It's a beautifully written and compassionate novel about drug and alchohol addiction in urban Britain, yet at the same time manages to be a cracking good read. An unusual combination. The story follows the death of Robert, a middle aged alcholic, from the point when his body is taken from his flat after lying undiscovered for days. McGregor writes with sensitivity and immediacy using a highly unusual point of view - apparently that of Robert's friends and compan...more
As I try to write about Even The Dogs I find myself either completely lost for words or drowning in them. Yes, it really is that good.
“They break down the door at the end of December and carry the body away”
The story arc is simple. The death of one man. Once he had a family, a wife and a daughter, but he fell into alcoholism and they left. His home became a haven for drug addicts. And then he died. His body is discovered, there is a post-mortem and then there is an inquest. Some questions are an...more
“They break down the door at the end of December and carry the body away”
The story arc is simple. The death of one man. Once he had a family, a wife and a daughter, but he fell into alcoholism and they left. His home became a haven for drug addicts. And then he died. His body is discovered, there is a post-mortem and then there is an inquest. Some questions are an...more
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...more
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...more
This novel about a group of drug and alcohol users was anything but addictive. If I hadn't received an Early Reviewer copy of this book, I wouldn't have finished it. The first three chapters are very difficult to push through. A short story format would have much better suited the content and style as the premise is intriguing and the language somewhat innovative. But as a novel, Even the Dogs wears on one's patience and is stretched to thinly. McGregor's language is a constant barrage of drug-a...more
Very grusome subject, sometimes I did not really want to read the paragraph but it was a case of I have started so must finish, it was compulsive.
They way Jom McGregor has written in prose, is somewhat old fashioned, but it works. I found it was necessary to concentrate whilst reading this book and if there was one book I could get my teenage duaghter to read it would be this one. I don't think anyone having read and understood it, would every even think about using drugs.
The ending had to be...more
They way Jom McGregor has written in prose, is somewhat old fashioned, but it works. I found it was necessary to concentrate whilst reading this book and if there was one book I could get my teenage duaghter to read it would be this one. I don't think anyone having read and understood it, would every even think about using drugs.
The ending had to be...more
For such a little book I found this really hard going and it took me ages to read. It's a really heavy topic, taking the reader on a tour of the life of a group of addicts. Some addicted to heroin and some alcohol, the book starts with the death of an alcoholic and gradually introduces the reader to his friends and daughter and gives some insight into why he lives his life the way he does..
There were sections of the book that felt somewhat choppy with the story telling, zoning in and out on cert...more
There were sections of the book that felt somewhat choppy with the story telling, zoning in and out on cert...more
When I began reading this book the characters disgusted me. The world McGregor portrays is so foreign and sinister to what I am used to (thank goodness I suppose) that I found it quite unsettling reading. It is a world of drug users, alcoholics and delinquents; where the most urgent and important need is to make enough money for the next score. By the end of the novel, i can't say i liked any of the characters, but they became more human. I pitied them. I hoped for something positive amongst the...more
Hmmm not an easy read - either the subject matter or the style but it is a very good book. The central premise is the finding of the long dead body of Robert an alcoholic, who lived in a decaying flat along with a a number of passing itinerant addicts/ friends. The story is told in a fragmented style switching from friend to friend and inter-cut with the police activity as they take him away and go through the process of determining who he was and why he died. As the novel progresses you learn a...more
Estrangement seems to be the central theme of this book. I enjoyed the way the language mirrored the different protagonist's views of their lives. All of their lives are 'rattled' by their never ceasing desire for smack and their every move and thought is obsessed by it. As a reader, one is drawn in by their genuine voice and uncompromising attitude: no BS please.
I think this is an adventurous book as it draws one into an experience of drug and alcohol abuse such as one had never lived to see....more
I think this is an adventurous book as it draws one into an experience of drug and alcohol abuse such as one had never lived to see....more
I found this a really difficult read. I selected it as our first book club read, and if I wasn't hosting the meeting, I would've stopped Reading it before I managed to drag my way through the first chapter.
I found the chapters way too long, the sentence structures unnecessarily confusing and the characters totally unlikeable. In short, I did not understand the motivation behind writing this book, or highlighting the lives and problems of these people.
However, it did make for some very interestin...more
I found the chapters way too long, the sentence structures unnecessarily confusing and the characters totally unlikeable. In short, I did not understand the motivation behind writing this book, or highlighting the lives and problems of these people.
However, it did make for some very interestin...more
This a dark book. The main character is dead and we explore how he died and the life he spent, from promising first love to a sordid alcoholic death in a bleak semi abandoned council flat. The book explores the life at the bottom of the social heap and the addicts, of drugs and alcohol who scrape their living in the move from night shelter to flat to life under a bridge, but never escaping from the circle. Life is the gap between social welfare payment, begging, petty theft, and scoring the next...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| THE LISTS: Even the Dogs [100%] | 1 | 6 | Dec 02, 2012 08:27am | |
| THE LISTS: Even the Dogs [90%] | 1 | 3 | Dec 02, 2012 06:58am | |
| THE LISTS: Even the Dogs [70%] | 1 | 3 | Dec 02, 2012 06:14am | |
| THE LISTS: Even the Dogs [60%] | 1 | 3 | Nov 24, 2012 06:32pm | |
| THE LISTS: Even the Dogs [50%] | 1 | 2 | Nov 24, 2012 06:24pm | |
| THE LISTS: Even the Dogs [40%] | 1 | 5 | Nov 12, 2012 04:32am | |
| THE LISTS: Even the Dogs [30%] | 1 | 3 | Nov 12, 2012 04:18am |
Jon McGregor is a British author who has written three novels. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things was nominated for the 2002 Booker Prize, and was the winner of both the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2003. So Many Ways to Begin was published in 2006 and was on the Booker prize long list. His newest novel, Even the Dogs was published in 2010.
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