book giveaway for Even the Dogs: A Novel

[close] 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 the shadows, a chorus keeping vigil as the hours pass, paying 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—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. [close]