2012年--即使是狗

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2012 – Even the Dogs
Author: Jon McGregor
Winner –  Watch Jon McGregor’s Acceptance Speech
2012 Shortlist      2012 Longlist
The Judges’ Citation

Even the Dogs is a fearless experiment which shows us in close-up detail the lives of a gathering of homeless addicts as they go about their daily forage for shelter, drink or a fix. In a masterpiece of narrative technique the viewpoint shifts and morphs through the lives of a handful of derelicts who stumble and fall, stumble and fall as they seek to redeem themselves from addiction, homelessness and those impulses which too often rise up within them and defeat their best interests.

Here we stand among them as they accompany a dead comrade on his final journey.  With no voyeurism but with a compassionate eye, we are taken on a fragmented tour of purgatory; we journey through ramshackle flats and squats, ambulances and mortuaries, crematoria and courts: we hear their voices ranting and raving, their desperation and paranoia, their hankering after home and family; every broken sentence and fractured diatribe draws us closer to the elemental pressures of their lives.

There is something bracingly generous about Even the Dogs. It credits readers with a willingness to engage with an experiment which requires us to roll up our sleeves and take authorship of the book as we piece together the lives of its characters. It is an experiment which deflects attention away from the writer so that the reader gets to genuinely feel the characters anguish and rage at both themselves and the world; scene by scene the novel gradually unfolds in a way which draws our sympathies deeper into a clearer appreciation of their plight. In doing so it fills us with that complicit sense of trespass and intrusion which is the mark of the true work of art.

When all is said and done Even the Dogs is a compelling read. It fills the reader with a vivid sense of how the novel accommodates new techniques and idioms; in doing so it becomes thrilling  in a way that is mysterious, frightening in a way that grapples us closer to the characters circumstances and finally, noble in its clear-eyed truth telling. With no hectoring or table thumping the author gets us to stand and listen. When we close the book we marvel that McGregor, in less than two hundred pages, has managed to sketch such a complete and complex picture of a world which is so near to hand but so seldom lingered over.

The greatest compliment we can pay the novel is that we will go back to read it again – to relive it, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with its men and women and to bear witness to their trials and sufferings.

Judges: Mike McCormack, Elizabeth Nunez, Tim Parks, Evelyn Schlag, Dubravka Ugresic. Non-voting Chairman Judge Eugene R. Sullivan


About the Book
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 futilely searches for his other friends to share the news of Robert’s death; Laura, Robert’s daughter, who stumbles into the junkie’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.

(From Publisher)

About the Author
Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin. 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 born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham. Even the Dogs, published by Bloomsbury in February 2010 and in paperback in February 2011, is his third novel.

This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, published by Bloomsbury in February 2012, is the fourth novel from Jon McGregor, which tells the tales of the sorts of things you don’t imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do.

Librarian’s Comments
Heartfelt and artistically impressive exploration of human existence on the fringes of life – where hope sparkles beyond hope and humanity survives in spite of inhuman conditions

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Author       
Jon McGregor

Country       
GB

Nominating Library       
M.I. Rudomino State Library for Foreign Literature, Moscow, Russia

Publisher       
Bloomsbury, UK



2012年--即使是狗
作者。乔恩-麦格雷戈
获奖者 - 观看乔恩-麦格雷戈的获奖感言
2012年入围名单 2012年长名单
评委的评价

即使是狗》是一项无畏的实验，它以特写镜头向我们展示了一群无家可归的瘾君子的生活，他们每天都在寻找住所、饮料或毒品。在一个叙事技巧的杰作中，视角在一小撮失足者的生活中转换和变形，他们跌跌撞撞，跌跌撞撞，试图将自己从毒瘾、无家可归和那些经常在他们内心升起并击败他们最大利益的冲动中拯救出来。

在这里，我们站在他们中间，看着他们陪伴一位死去的同志走完他的最后一程。 我们没有偷窥癖，而是以同情的眼光，带着我们进行了一次支离破碎的炼狱之旅；我们穿越了破旧的公寓和木屋、救护车和停尸房、火葬场和法庭：我们听到了他们咆哮和狂欢的声音，他们的绝望和偏执，他们对家和家人的渴望；每一个破碎的句子和破碎的自述都让我们更接近他们生活中的基本压力。

即使是狗，也有一些令人振奋的慷慨之处。它让读者愿意参与一种实验，这种实验要求我们卷起袖子，在拼凑书中人物的生活时掌握作者身份。这是一个将注意力从作家身上转移开的实验，这样读者就能真正感受到人物对自己和世界的痛苦和愤怒；小说一幕幕地逐渐展开，将我们的同情心引向对他们的困境有了更清晰的认识。在这样做的过程中，它使我们充满了那种侵入和入侵的共鸣感，而这正是真正的艺术作品的标志。

当所有这些都完成后，《即使是狗》是一本引人注目的读物。它让读者生动地感受到小说是如何适应新的技术和习语的；在这样做的过程中，它以一种神秘的方式变得惊心动魄，以一种使我们更接近人物处境的方式令人恐惧，最后，它以清晰的眼光讲述事实，显得高尚。作者并没有对我们说三道四或拍桌子，而是让我们站着听。当我们合上这本书时，我们惊叹于麦格雷戈在不到两百页的篇幅里，成功地勾勒出一幅完整而复杂的世界图景，而这个世界是如此近在咫尺，却很少被人留恋。

我们对这部小说最大的褒奖是，我们会回去再读一遍--重温它，与书中的男人和女人肩并肩地站在一起，见证他们的考验和痛苦。

评委。麦克-麦科马克、伊丽莎白-努涅斯、蒂姆-帕克斯、伊夫林-施拉格、杜布拉夫卡-乌格雷西奇。无表决权的主席尤金-R-沙利文法官


关于这本书
在圣诞节和新年之间的一个寒冷、安静的日子里，一个男人的尸体在一个废弃的公寓里被发现。他的朋友在一旁看着，但他们也死了。他们的尸体在整个城市的棚屋和小巷里被发现。他们是一批糟糕的海洛因的受害者，他们在阴影中，随着时间的流逝，形成了一个守夜的合唱团，在他们的朋友的尸体被带走、检查、调查和火化时，他们都在表达自己的特殊敬意。
他们所有的故事都通过一系列断裂的叙事，一块一块地铺开。我们见到了死者罗伯特，他是一群瘾君子中唯一的酒鬼；丹尼，刚从不舒服的假期和家人一起回来，他发现了尸体，并徒劳地寻找他的其他朋友来分享罗伯特的死亡消息；劳拉，罗伯特的女儿，在她与父亲分开多年后，她偶然进入瘾君子的生活；希瑟，自她十几岁以来第一次拥有自己的地方；麦克，福克兰群岛战争的退伍军人；以及所有其他人。
他们的故事是关于生命从裂缝中坠落的故事，是关于希望的燃烧和消亡的故事，是关于被更强烈的需求所淹没的爱情的故事，是关于毒品、苦恼和对更广阔世界的漠视所造成的破坏的故事。这些看不见的人生活在一个平行的现实中，无法获得基本的生物舒适，如食物和住所。在他们的突然死亡中，很明显，他们受到的尊重比他们短暂的生命中的还要多。
即使是狗》是对社会边缘生活的一次亲密探索，其中充满了爱、损失、绝望和对救赎的半点憧憬，令人振奋。

(来自出版社)

关于作者
乔恩-麦格雷戈（Jon McGregor）是广受好评的《如果没有人说了不起的事》和《这么多开始的方式》的作者。他是贝蒂-特拉斯克奖和萨默塞特-毛姆奖的得主，并两次入围曼布克奖的长名单。他于1976年出生在百慕大。他在诺福克长大，现在住在诺丁汉。2010年2月由布鲁姆斯伯里出版，2011年2月出版平装本，是他的第三部小说。

This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You》由Bloomsbury于2012年2月出版，是Jon McGregor的第四部小说，讲述了你无法想象会发生在你这样的人身上的各种事情的故事。但有时它们确实发生了。

图书管理员的评论
对人类在生活边缘的存在进行了发自内心的、艺术上令人印象深刻的探索--在那里，希望的光芒超越了希望，人类在非人的条件下也能生存。

其他信息
作者       
乔恩-麦格雷戈

国家       
英国

提名图书馆       
M.I. Rudomino国家外国文学图书馆，俄罗斯，莫斯科

出版商       
英国布鲁姆斯伯里公司