This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
Author(s): Jon McGregor
Tender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers.
A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman's windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. These aren't the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do.
Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk and tender moments are hard-won.
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Tender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers
McGregor is the nearest thing you will ever come across to a literary Beethoven. Words go beyond being tools of his trade and become an orchestrated, inspired and precisely designed tone poem for each creative idea ... One of the most perfect pieces of written English I have ever come across Sunday Express
Set in and around the fens, these wickedly brilliant stories are as black as the local soil ... Throughout, omissions and ellipses set the mind racing like a treacherous tide, rushing in to fill the gaps. Not a book for bedtime, then. But very, very good indeed Daily Mail
To the anxious literary festival audience member - and anyone else feeling downcast about the state of the short story today - I say, read Jon McGregor's new book. Its verve, its inventiveness, its sheer quiet audacity will reassure you that the short story is alive, well and reaching new heights - Maggie O'Farrell Guardian
Sharp, dark and hugely entertaining, this collection establishes McGregor as one of the most exciting voices in short fiction - Alex Preston Observer
Haunting and brilliant Independent Jon McGregor writes with frightening intelligence and impeccable technique. Every page is a revelation Teju Cole
A writer alive to the lithe life of language ... A huge talent Sunday Times
A striking collection ... the prose is picked clean, pellucid Sunday Telegraph
McGregor's prose is as sparse as the countryside it has alighted on, with barely a simile or metaphor in sight Literary Review
There is a lot to chew over and a lot that stays in the mind Psychologies
Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways to Begin and Even the Dogs. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and he has been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was runner-up for the BBC National Short Story Award in both 2010 and 2011, with 'If It Keeps on Raining' and 'Wires' respectively. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham.
General Fields
- :
- : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- : 0.19
- : 01 January 2013
- : 198mm X 129mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 February 2013
- : books
Special Fields
- : Jon McGregor
- : Paperback
- : 1
- : 823.92
- : 272