There is no doubt at all that Jon McGregor is a formidable literary talent - his due care and consideration of language is there in every word he writes. Almost painfully so, for me, I'm afraid - while I always, always enjoy reading his work, I tend to find myself doing so at a cool distance that's more about admiration than real emotional involvement in the story he's telling.
Initially, that's not the case with Lean, Fall, Stand - the opening section captures so much of place and character, both in their personal histories and the immediately ever-shifting(!) circumstances. It's beyond wonderful. And I loved the shift to what happens next and the quiet strain and torment of what happens when a health incident disrupts everything about multiple lives. Again, pure joy and wondrous to see the deftness with which he navigates it.
But then we get to the (long) nitty-gritty of communication and story and how we (all) retrospectively frame narratives and experience and trauma in so many ways, which is (in so many ways!) fascinating, but again, I'm reset to admiration rather than the sheer joy of being caught up in the story itself. It finishes majestically - quiet and sad and hopeful and beautiful - and I will recommend it as I always do his work. But I do wish he'd just let loose and allow us all fully on board for the ride next time.

I quite deliberately came to this book cold - I’ve been a fan of McGregor since ‘if no one speaks of remarkable things’ and so I requested this without reading the blurb. The opening third of the book came as something of a surprise as a result - Antarctic thriller was not the genre i was expecting! - but McGregor skilfully introduces the themes of communication, relationships, the danger of things said and left unsaid, and the importance of storytelling. The change of tone after the ‘incident’ is both unsettling and a fascinating insight into what might be going on in someone’s mind, only to be followed up by fresh perspectives and a shift in narrative and experience.

I’m being deliberately opaque for those that prefer to be unspoilt, all I’d say is that - with recent family experience in this area- the book is simultaneously clinical and burning with unspoken, even unspeakable, emotion.

I was totally transported by this rich, beautiful, atmospheric novel. Fascinating and insightful, but with a great, compelling story. Excellent.

An exquisite story. The frustration that we go through when we can’t communicate and the ripple effects it has on everything we do. How it erodes the person we became and replaces us with a whole new person.
An outstanding story a deeply raw and invasive look at the aftermath of a stroke and how each person is changed in different ways.
Beautiful, beautiful in every way.

This novel really took me by surprise - I didn’t know too much about it before I started reading and it didn’t follow the character I was expecting it to, nor did it then continue to follow that character throughout the book.

Ostensibly a story about a polar expedition gone wrong, the shifting perspectives across the three titular sections reveal that this is really an exploration of communication - the stories we tell, how we tell them and what happens when we can’t any more. Without giving anything away, I was fascinated by the final section of this novel, which covers in-depth a topic I didn’t know much about in such a compassionate and knowledgeable way.

Whilst not the kind of novel I would have normally picked up, I really enjoyed this and highly recommend - thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

It's taken a while for me to pull together what I think about Lean Fall Stand, which is probably due to its strange power and elusiveness. The three sections signalled in the title are quite distinct. Lean reads like an Antarctic thriller, and shows McGregor could easily write thrillers if he were interested, but once the central event occurs, it also describes beautifully Doc's mental disintegration. Fall is about the effects of this, on Doc and his wife, and also depicts impressively language failure, isolation and confinement - Anna's position caring for him mirrors both her husband's position in hospital and the isolation of his years in the Antarctic. Stand covers recovery, up to a point, in which McGregor's descriptions of using movement and dance to communicate are particularly beautiful and breathtaking. There is also an underlying sense of unease and explanations withheld, familiar from McGregor's, which gives the novel depth but might disappoint some. An impressive achievement overall.

Not since my days of reading Biggles has a book landed me right into such a thrilling beginning, with a wild conflict between three men and the vicissitudes of Antarctica. Hard to believe this was the author whose Reservoir 13 had me eventually reading as though listening to a piece of elaborate music and not worrying very much about whether I had the plot details precisely understood.

After the Antarctica “Lean,” comes the “Fall” of Robert, one of the explorers, damaged by the Antarctica episode. But it also represents a fall of his wife’s normal life and a fascinating exploration of her self-exploration in the context of caring for Robert.

The “Stand” section broadens our perspective again, to give the front row to the rehabilitation specialists and their attempts at innovation while building up to an event that will demonstrate the abilities of Robert and other damaged souls and bodies.

The writing is impeccable, as expected. The only flaw is that the use of damaged speech, while probably accurate, might have been trimmed to make for a more taut middle section.

But a top-class read with the extra layer McGregor is so agile at adding.

I'd describe Jon McGregor's writing as 'quiet storytelling', in that his words slowly draw you in - you begin by thinking 'Am I enjoying this' to finishing the story and exclaiming 'I loved that!' It was the same when I read Reservoir 13 - it was amazing, even though not a huge amount happens. His stories are very character oriented, his descriptions of people are so exact you think you know them personally.
This book is about a tragic event that happens in Antarctica, and how what happened there affects one of the characters both physically and mentally, and the impact it has on family and friends.

What a stunning novel. Having just finished Lean Fall Stand I am still affected by the language and the theme of communication or not that runs through each chapter. Robert, Thomas, and Luke are mapping and carrying out important research work in Antarctica, a virtually uninhabited, ice-covered landmass. An area of extreme weather conditions where sunshine could turn to snowy stormy wipeout in minutes, clear visibility replaced by blindness...…”Glaciers and ridges and icebergs and scree, weathering and wind-form and shear. The air so clear that distances shrank and all the colours shone”...... When wipeout occurs the 3 colleagues are each involved in separate challenges. Thomas, as the photographer, is cast adrift when the ice beneath him cracks and breaks. Communication is impossible conversation replaced by broken static over the airwaves. Fallout is swift and far reaching and as we move forward in the story Anna, Robert’s wife, is forced to reevaluate her everyday existence as she welcomes home a very traumatised husband.

Robert has suffered a stroke, he is bedridden as not only his body but his ability to speak has deserted him…..”The effects of stroke include language impairments, reduced mobility, difficulties with swallowing, and cognitive deficits”......Communication once so accessible has gone his thoughts are trapped within a damaged body, unable to connect with his wife Anna following the tragedy that happened in Station K...Communication once so easy no longer present. And so begins the process of painful rehabilitation. The human state of existence relies on the need to communicate and when this is gone, and replaced by breakdown and misunderstanding, chaos ensues. Robert attends group therapy work making the acquaintance of fellow stroke victims all existing in their own bubble, a form of confinement…..and gradually a different “living” begins to seem possible.

It is inevitable that his illness will affect his relationship with his wife Anna. A career woman and always supportive of her spouse she is now faced with a new reality….life or a carer...both husband and wife slave to the stroke…..”His frustration at not being able to speak kept tipping over into frustration with her for not understanding”...... Understanding and support once the centre of their married life has deserted leaving sadness and heartbreak in its wake. Ultimately Lean Fall Stand is a book of hope and the ability of the human spirit to accept and move forward introducing a different type of communication. Many thanks to the good people of netgalley for a gratis copy of this book in exchange for an honest review and this is what I have written….Brilliant, poignant, uplifting, and at times even funny and oh so highly recommended.

I loved Reservoir 13 and was very much looking forward to Jon McGregor's next novel . The first section, set in a desolate research station, contains some fantastic descriptions of the landscape and builds to a crescendo as the prose describes a tragic accident when the team is caught in a sudden storm. The second and third sections switch gear completely as we follow the subsequent recovery of one of the team, first in a Chilean hospital and then back in England. I thought it was excellent!

I’ve got a lot of work to do. They’re going to have me filling out carer assessment forms. I don’t want to be a carer; I never even really wanted to be a wife.

Lean Fall Stand opens in the Antarctic and with an interesting nod to Rachel Cusk:

<i>Doc had gone off on the other skidoo and climbed up Priestley Head, to give the picture perspective. Without someone in the frame there was no way to capture the scale of this place. He’d been struggling with it since they’d first arrived. In the pictures he’d taken so far, everything looked too small. The distant mountains. The ridges on either side of the valley. The glacier. The icebergs creaking against each other, with the light turning bluely inside them.</i>

This phenomenon was first recorded by the photographer Herbert Ponting who in 1911 joined Captain Scott's, ultimately ill-fated, Terra Nova Expedition. Stephen J. Pyne in his The Ice: A Journey To Antarctica described the problem as one of “annihilated perspective”, a term that Cusk was then to use to describe her innovative Outline/Transit/Cusk trilogy.

The Lean section of the novel tells the story of a modern day, but similarly ill-fated, polar trip. Three researchers in a remote polar station get separated in a sudden storm, struggling to locate or even communicate with each other.

This part of the novel is a little Boys’ Own and when one of the party, ‘Doc’ (Robert), is felled with a blow to the back of the neck seems to be heading to Ice Station Zebra territory. But as Doc’s own thoughts and verbal communication become scrambled it becomes clear his assailant is internal, not external.

The second section, Fall, was much my favourite. It is a moving and realistic account, told from the perspective of Doc/Robert’s wife, of recovery from a stroke and the associated communication difficulties.

<i>She had to return a call from the speech and language service, and confirm the first home visit. She had to contact someone at the Institute, and talk to them about Robert’s sick pay. She had to apply for an extension on her compassionate leave. She had to talk to somebody at the Institute about arranging a visit for Robert, who was desperate to get to the office and see people. He was under the impression that he would soon be returning to work. She had to find a way of discussing how difficult this might be. She had to reply to Luke Adebayo, who had asked if he could visit. She had to let Robert’s sister know when she could come and stay, and reply to a string of other text messages asking for news. She had to pull out the dishwasher and unblock the drainage hose. She had to wash the laundry again because she’d left it sitting too long in the machine. When she made dinner she had to cook the onions in margarine because there was no oil and she couldn’t get to the shops. She had to carry the dinner up to Robert on a tray, and cut up his food, and sit with him while he ate. She had to air the room, again.
...
‘Robert. I’m not going to argue. I don’t want us to argue. But I’ve made some lunch and I’m not going to carry it upstairs.’ She turned around and left the room. She went into the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water and screamed into a folded towel.</i>

The third and final section, Stand, builds on the themes of the earlier parts and provides a wider lens, as Robert attends a speech therapy and rehabilitation course with a number of other stroke victims. The story is told with compassion and the exploration of both different communication difficulties (such as fluent aphasia) and different ways to overcome them (song, mime, dance) is interesting and feels well researched. However in literary terms this was the least successful part of the novel for me, as I found the shifting points of view rather unsatisfactory and the climax, with the course attendees telling their stories via different mediums, felt rather better suited for (indeed perhaps aimed at?) a film script than the written page.

Overall, a well-told and compassionate story. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.

It is hard to review this book without spoilers. It is in three parts, each relating to the title and begins with a tense description of an Antarctic storm in which three men are trapped, separated from each other and communicating by radio. This begins the theme of this novel which is communication; it explores situations in which verbal communication is compromised or impossible.

It is well written and unusual. There is much that is poignant, including a description of a wife, with a high flying career, who finds herself the career for her husband. We see her daily grind and the poor support offered to her. Ideas of what constitutes heroism are explored.

I admired the book, but didn’t enjoy it. Perhaps it’s because the world at the moment is bleak in lockdown but I had to force myself to finish it. I emerged feeling quite low having read it which isn’t what I want at the moment. So little to criticise, a lot to admire, but not for me.

A strange book - it starts off as an Antarctic thriller; storm, negligence, death - all very intriguing. Then there are pages of gibberish - I know this represents the confusion of the stroke and the circumstances but after three pages I had got the message, I did not need however many pages that followed.

The middle part of the book introduces the wife, Anna, whom I very much enjoyed. Her ambivalence towards her husband and reluctance to become his nurse where realistic and understandable. In the third part, the group therapy, one has to suspend disbelief and go with it. I was expecting a bigger reveal and so felt frustrated by the ending.

It has me left longing for the the peace and reflection of a Friend's Meeting - I have not been for a few years and I am now moved to do something about this - so thank you!

I knew nothing about this book other than it had something to do with Antarctica. I REALLY enjoyed reading this, knowing nothing about it, because it made the unexpected twists and turns all the more enjoyable. So, if this is a book you are interested in reading, I recommend reading as little as possible about it!

<spoiler>
The book's first section (the first 20% of so) begins with a storm in Antarctica, with three men in grave danger. This was pretty gripping stuff. It almost read as a thriller at times, a survival tale. McGregor's calm, controlled description of the landscape, the wind, and white-out conditions reminded me of his similarly controlled descriptions of the passing seasons and scenery in <i>Reservoir 13.</i>

The book overall could be considered a survival tale, but not in the way you might think. The main plot of the book (and this is where you MUST stop reading, if you don't want spoilers!) involves one of the men's attempts to recover from the stroke he suffers on Antarctica, which leaves him with aphasia. He can no longer understand or express speech as he once did, and will never be the same again. This is very rich material for any novelist - how do you communicate if language itself is not available to you? How do you tell your story when you can barely construct a sentence? As a brochure puts it blandly at one point, <i>"Telling stories is part of what's difficult about living with aphasia."</i>

One of the characters in his speech therapy group has fluent aphasia - a form of aphasia in which you can talk effortlessly, but the words themselves are meaningless (I'd never heard of it, and it definitely led me down <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oef68YabD0">a YouTube rabbit hole).</a> In this novel, the character with fluent aphasia talks nonsense, words that sound eerily apocalyptic when strung together - prophetic, almost. <i>"Hello to you and you and watch the water as it comes upon us all."</i> It really made me think about language and meaning, and how as a society we are so CONDITIONED to be able to talk to each other.

The main parts of the book that were REALLY, REALLY strong to me were a) the passages from the wife's POV, and b) the sections about the speech therapy group. I LOVED how the wife doesn't actually care for Robert that much, which puts her in a tough dilemma - how to now be a caretaker for a man who was never really around for their marriage (in fact his absence seems to have made their relationship a success). The passages about her daily duties as a caretaker - something SO many people have to do - are really powerful. I love it when fiction focuses on the everyday invisible lives and jobs and routines of people. There's some powerful social commentary here too about social cuts.

The title, as I understand it, feels like a commentary on Robert's journey in the book - leaning, falling, standing. And how you can stand not on your own, but with help and support from others. I found it very, VERY moving. I loved the part where Robert acts out his accident in Antarctica with help from the movement therapists - the scene feels like it's trying to say something about testimony, and memory, and doing it via actions rather than words - finding different ways to 'talk' about trauma.

I suppose the main 'conflict' is a plot thread throughout that involves the authorities (or whoever) trying to understand what exactly happened that night in Antarctica. We the readers (or at least in my case) also don't have a clear idea of What Happened, as that passage was narrated primarily from Doc's POV in the initial throes of the stroke. This must have also been an appealing challenge for McGregor - how do you write from the POV from someone who is literally losing their ability to speak and understand? It can be a bit Joycean at times (and tbh in the moment it dragged a bit for me, mainly because I was impatient to know exactly what was wrong with him), but overall it works.

The setting of Antarctica is interesting because it obviously makes global warming an implicit theme. It ties in with the book's bigger themes of language and communication - how do you communicate the idea that the world is ending? What kind of language is appropriate? <i>"They could only establish the same things all over again, with ever-increasing certainty and detail. Yes, there is a clear link between CO2 emissions and temperature rise. No, there is no historical precedent. Yes, immediate action is required."</i>

Overall, a beautifully memorable book about language and caretaking. I just loved this. Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Quotes:
<i>You're right to be frustrated. But we're starting to think about different ways of communicating, aren't we? And you're each working to find your own techniques. We don't always have the words. But we can talk around things. We can use gestures.

He always had to reach for the words. As though they'd been put on a high shelf in the stores. Out of reach. Or left outside, snowed under, needing to be dug out. He used his hands to fill in the gaps, when he couldn't quite get to the words. Show us, Robert. Use anything.

Aphasia affects all aspects of a person's communication but the ability to tell stories can be a significant loss. Your loved one might struggle to talk about their day, or to tell grandchildren about key events in their lives. We have been exploring ways of telling stories with all tools available.

"Once. Upon a--time. Our stories. Were told. In--words. Now we talk. We talk in --new ways."</i>

</spoiler>

I'm struggling to put in words what I found underwhelming about this book - which is, ironically, entirely appropriate since issues about words and communication are what the text is all about.

From the mis-use and inadequacy of language ('people said these things, but the words didn't always fit'), failed technical communications as radios and phones fail to work in the face of a polar storm, to the struggle to recall linguistic proficiency following a stroke, and the deliberate refusal to communicate ('like, all shut down, monosyllabic'), this is all about fractures and fisions in the way people interact via language.

I guess my issue is this is hardly saying anything new, is it? There's some technical skill in showing the breakdown of language structure as someone is experiencing a stroke, and no doubt the sections showing the labour of recuperation and the burden on the family is well done but overall this never really came together for me.

There seem to be attempts to stir up some narrative pizzazz with a kind of pseudo-mystery structure - what really happened that day of the storm? what are the implications of the first accident? - and again with the drive towards the 'showing' to tell the story at the end but I'm afraid this never really carried me along.

Sorry, McGregor fans - this just didn't work for me.

This is a book I’m going to want to read again... and again. So layered, so complex, yet so simple in its message.

I’m keen to avoid spoilers or to talk too much about the content of this book as I think if people read a review like that before reading they’d miss out on the quite remarkable tension created in the first few pages alone. The opening chapters are breathtakingly good.

The intensity throughout the book ebbs and flows, but is captivating throughout. What a truly powerful author.

If you haven't already, please read reservoir 13. It was the book that made me leap with you to discover that he’d written a new novel. It is truly exquisite. This is different, But I’d recommend as highly.

Wonderful. Terrifying, confusing and gripping. Still not totally sure of some of the plot having read it but it was totally engrossing.

I do so enjoy Jon McGregor’s writing and this one contributed to my Christmas feasting. After a riveting, thrilling first section set in the Antarctic, atmosphere and tension throughout, I was expecting the second section to start where the first left off. Instead I found a complete change of direction, equally enthralling for entirely different reasons and especially so for my personal family situation. I would hate to spoil the book for anybody by saying too much more about the events he describes and their aftermath. The final third wraps everything up, by which I don’t mean to say that everything is in any way resolved, but it ties the first and second parts together so well with overarching themes.

Two of these are sound and communication, the latter being one of Jon McGregor’s frequent interests. In terms of sound we have the fractured radio transmissions of the Antarctic team, bursts of lucidity interspersed with static/white noise reflected in speech patterns later on. Communications and intentions are rife with misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Towards the end of the third section we experience a gradual ‘tuning in’ to communications from individuals in the group. Jon McGregor’s feel for group dynamics is one of his greatest strengths and shown to great effect here.

An immersive and emotional, poignant read, highly recommended.

Jon Mcgregor is an extraordinary author .Each of his books beautifully written draws you into the cleverly woven plot..From the opening pages of his latest extraordinary novel set partly in the Antarctica you feel the freezing weather the isolation and then an incident occurs and your jolted into the haunting story.A book that will have you turning the pages trying to understand what actually happened that day.and follow as the story involves the people left behind touches on the victim of a stroke and his wife coping with him now that he’s back recovering.So many layers that will keep you immersed in their world,Highly recommend.#netgalley #4thestatebooks,

/ _ |

A new Jon McGregor novel would be the highlight of any year – and this one will I can confidently say be a literary highlight of 2021.

The wonderful Reservoir 13 starts as a missing girl mystery but almost immediately becomes an multi-voice exploration of how quotidian dramas play out against the rhythmic seasons of village life and the natural world, while time continues to pass incessantly.

This book his latest (due to be published in April 2021) starts as a book around polar exploration (the author having visited the Antarctic with the British Antarctic Survey around 20 years ago I believe) and about survival in a calamity in extreme conditions. But over time it turns into an exploration of communication and story telling, and an examination of how true heroism can simply be found in the need to navigate and adapt to unexpected challenges of circumstance in normal life.

The blurb of the book already gives substantial information on the plot (perhaps even slightly too much – I would recommend not to read it as it dissipates some of the tension of the first part, which while not really the core of the book, still is an essential part of it) and at this stage (4 months prior to publication) I would not really want to add any more.

As I said communication and storytelling as a theme recurs through the novel – and in fact it’s the retrospective exploration of this idea that helped me realise the importance of the first section. We have: the contradictions of the initial training and its inability to map to a real world crisis; lost radios and then intermittent radio contact; uncharged and unused satellite phones; drifting GPS co-ordinates which tell a story which is not appreciated until too late; scheduled radio check ins with base which serve as a sign that all is well – with the absence of communication triggering an emergency.

In the second section we see the difficulty of expressing oneself in a foreign language; Bridget as someone who would be a great listener if only she could stop talking; Robert’s incessant relaying of tales of his exploration on his trips home and Anna’s final and ominously prescient request for silence; Anna’s love of the silence of the meetings of the Society of Friends; the different languages and alien communications of medical and legal professionals and technical experts.; Anna’s son’s comments on her monosyllabic shut downs; the story telling of an inquest report (and the trade off between having a story that makes sense to the victim’s family and not having any apportionment or admittance of guilt); speech therapy and communication workarounds (which then form the base of the third section).

One of McGregor’s greatest skills is his remarkable ability to voice a community: the street in his debut novel “If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things”, the chorus of voices in the remarkable “Even The Dogs” and of course the village in “Reservoir 13”. We see this perhaps most strongly in all of his writing in the book’s third section as the therapy group come together; by the final scene of the “showing” we are both able to identify immediately individual voices, and to understand the story they are trying to tell, even though a superficial examination of the voices would render them largely meaningless.

Other links to his previous books:

Here of course we have a group of people who would very much like to speak of normal things (let alone remarkable ones) but struggle to do so.

Readers of “Even The Dogs” will remember an inquest – and a man called Robert whose detailed and accurate testimony would be crucial but is missing (albeit for a very different reason).

Readers of “Reservoir 13” will see that the author’s ability to capture the natural cycles of an English village apply equally the breathtaking but harsh Antarctic landscape (and cleverly not just in the author’s own words but in his ability to capture the ability of Robert and a dancer, to capture this in slurred speech and mirrored movement.

And some links to my own life: I have a couple of tangential links to the BAS via University; my first job was with an insurance company founded by the Society of Friends; but most importantly both my late father and mother have suffered strokes: my father several (and a brain hemorrhage) and my mother only 12 months ago which means much of the book rings very true indeed.

Strongly recommended.

/ _ I