Even The Dogs
By Jon McGregor
195 page paperback published by Bloomsbury, 2011.
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 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.
BOOK CONDITION: Brand new. Never read.
Thankyou for your interest,
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