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Laddar... Even the Dogs (2010)av Jon McGregor
  
Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.   settingshadow | Aug 19, 2023 |   ) icolford | Apr 27, 2019 |  ) asxz | Mar 13, 2019 | ) Faradaydon | Feb 24, 2019 |  ) GaylaBassham | May 27, 2018 |
 “Even the Dogs,” McGregor’s third novel, continues his experiments with the devices of fiction. The book is narrated by a group of urban ghosts, victims of drug overdoses who look on as someone they know, Robert Radcliffe, is found dead in his shabby apartment. Other friends, family members and acquaintances, most of whom were part of Robert’s life, come in and out of focus as they move around the city looking for their next fixes and, along with the police and investigators, respond to Robert’s death. 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: “Always working and watching and chasing around for a bag of that. Jesus but. The man-hours that go into living like this. Takes some dedication.”  Even the Dogs is set among the underclass of an anonymous English city. The narrative is structured around the sudden death of Robert, a chronic alcoholic, and follows the state's processing of his corpse and the impact of its discovery on the ragged group of addicts and down-and-outs who surround him in his final years. Their story is narrated in a voice that, like them, is both striking and elusive. It inhabits the first person plural, often functioning like the directions in a film script ("We see someone getting out of a taxi") but also showing signs of having its own history ("We never met Yvonne but we see her now") and attitudes ("We're not sure what else we can do"). Even the Dogs is a courageous and passionate novel and shows McGregor to be one of the few young English writers taking genuine risks with language and form. If some of them fail to pay off, there is no less to admire, no less nerve and ingenuity, in the attempt.  On his website, McGregor – who's best known for his Booker-longlisted first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002) – names James Kelman and William Faulkner as the new book's literary models. With their help, he strikes a neat balance between depicting a semi-abstract landscape of suffering and grounding the characters' experiences firmly in history. His occasional use of the language of damnation and salvation doesn't tip over into would-be Beckett-like posturing, while the deep backgrounds to some of his character's problems – the Falklands war, Thatcher-era unemployment and, in one memorable passage, Afghanistan – are neither deployed as clinching revelations nor put on show as grand themes. McGregor also shows a fine ear for several varieties of regional speech, and exerts strict but not obsessive control over his initially formless-looking story. His reportorial absorption in the characters' world, with its restricted range of tone and incident, makes this powerful novel seem all the more resourcefully put together. Priser
WINNER OF THE 2012 IMPAC DUBLIN AWARDOn 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. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
Deltog i LibraryThing FörhandsrecensenterJon McGregors bok Even the Dogs delades ut via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Pågående diskussionerIngen/ingaPopulära omslag
 Google Books — Laddar...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg: (3.25)
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