This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You

The story 'If It Keeps on Raining' was the runner-up in the BBC Short Story competition 2010Even the Dogs was a Channel 4 TV bookclub pick and has sold 50,000 paperbacks so far; If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things has sold over 270,000 copiesJon 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 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. @jon_mcgregorA 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.Tender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writersMcGregor 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 acrossSet 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 indeedTo 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 heightsSharp, dark and hugely entertaining, this collection establishes McGregor as one of the most exciting voices in short fictionHaunting and brilliantJon McGregor writes with frightening intelligence and impeccable technique. Every page is a revelationA writer alive to the lithe life of language ... A huge talentA striking collection ... the prose is picked clean, pellucidMcGregor's prose is as sparse as the countryside it has alighted on, with barely a simile or metaphor in sightThere is a lot to chew over and a lot that stays in the mindTender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers