Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor: review

By Toby Clements Published: 6:00AM GMT twenty-six February 2010

This is Jon McGregors third novel and, identical to his initial two, it is slim, tranquil and authoritative, full of descriptions that have one see at things anew. On page one an crawl siren is since "a fat mouth of melting ice", for example. But McGregor has set himself a tough task, for Even the Dogs is created mostly from the outlook of heroin-addicted friends and in the chopped cant of a Midlands city where hold up revolves around "getting sorted" in a grubby prosaic on a ebbing legislature estate.

The story starts when the military arrive at the prosaic after neighbours protest of the smell, and in assorted fractured narratives (including one delivered in the initial chairman plural), McGregor tells the story of Robert, the occupant, whom the military find passed on the floor.

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It is not a happy story, of course. As Roberts physique is bagged and driven opposite locale for the post-mortem, McGregor performs a identical operation on Danny and Steve and Heather and Laura, receiving each one in spin as if they were viscera in Roberts body. He examines how it is they came to be as they are, spending each notation of their days on the run from the "rattlings" of withdrawal as they onslaught to scratch together sufficient to buy the share of �10 bags of brown.

It is unusual and disturbing, but McGregor brings these people the sort you glance in underpasses to the forefront and manages to have their dour lives in to something fragile and haunting.

Even the Dogs

by Jon McGregor

195pp, Bloomsbury, �12.99 Buy right away for �11.99 (PLUS �1.25 p&p) 0844 871 1515 or from Books