Lean Fall Stand: A Novel

Product Description A thrilling and propulsive novel of an Antarctica expedition gone wrong and its far-reaching consequences for the explorers and their families "leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story" (Hilary Mantel). “McGregor’s depiction of speechlessness, both metaphorical and physical, makes the novel much more interesting than if he had provided a page-turner about a botched expedition in Antarctica . . . McGregor’s carefully composed dialogue, filled with the repetition of so few words, had an eerie effect on me: for several days my own inner dialogue was often composed of the same words, as though I, too, was discovering how they could express drastically different emotions yet remain unreadable to the world." —Yiyun Li, New York Review of BooksRemember the training: find shelter or make shelter, remain in place, establish contact with other members of the party, keep moving, keep calm. Robert 'Doc' Wright, a veteran of Antarctic surveying, was there on the ice when the worst happened. He holds within him the complete story of that night—but depleted by the disaster, Wright is no longer able to communicate the truth. Instead, in the wake of the catastrophic expedition, he faces the most daunting adventure of his life: learning a whole new way to be in the world. Meanwhile Anna, his wife, must suddenly scramble to navigate the sharp and unexpected contours of life as a caregiver.From the Booker Prize-longlisted, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award-winning author of Reservoir 13, this is a novel every bit as mesmerizing as its setting. Tenderly unraveling different notions of heroism through the rippling effects of one extraordinary expedition on an ordinary family, Lean Fall Stand explores the indomitable human impulse to turn our experiences into stories—even when the words may fail us. Review A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the YearA Publishers Weekly Best Book of the YearA New Statesman Most Anticipated Book of the Year "Lean Fall Stand is a beautiful piece of work and should win a roomful of prizes. Jon McGregor writes plainly and exactly, like a poet, and the precision of his writing makes every heart-beat register. The quality of his attention is a flicker of light around the fragile human condition, and it leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story." —Hilary Mantel"As gripping as anything you’ll read this year . . . A book about the slipperiness of language, that flexible and fallible vehicle for consciousness and communication on which we are so dependent." —Jon Michaud, The Washington Post"[McGregor] is one of the few great living minimalists, able to mix deep pathos with wry comedy in a sentence too short to need a single comma . . . Every sentence in Lean Fall Stand serves, in its style, as a quiet reminder of how difficult it can be to represent ourselves to others." —Lily Meyer, NPR"Obsessive stylistic mastery . . . Memorable writing." —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal"[A] profoundly affecting story of a man who has lost his ability with language . . . McGregor's facility with language gives a power and a poignancy to this tale about language's loss that make it unmissable." —Cory Oldweiler, Minneapolis Star Tribune"Gripping." —Christopher Borelli, Chicago Tribune"A novel of complex feeling and beautiful restraint from one of the finest writers around." —Alexandra Harris, The Guardian "Another McGregor novel that, beneath its serene surface, takes huge risks . . . Fortunately, it’s also another McGregor novel that triumphantly gets away with it . . . McGregor commits himself so wholeheartedly to the project of honouring minutiae (and has the literary talent to match) that the scene when post-stroke Doc first learns to touch his nose feels almost as dramatic as an Antarctic blizzard." —James Walton, The Times "Jon McGregor’s new novel . . . opens as excitingly as any work of fiction I’ve recently read .