This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
Jon McGregor

Tender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers.A 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.

This Isn’t the

Sort of Thing

That Happens

to Someone

Like You

Jon McGregor

Copyright (#u552e8311-821a-55ea-928d-0eee6d869256)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

First published by Bloomsbury in 2012

This eBook published by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright © 2012 by Jon McGregor

Linocuts © 2012 by Paul Greeno

Cover image © Shutterstock

Jon McGregor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008218652

Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008218669

Version: 2016-12-07

Praise for This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You (#u552e8311-821a-55ea-928d-0eee6d869256)

‘Jon McGregor is one of the UK’s most fascinating and versatile writers’ Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

‘Jon McGregor’s writing combines dreamy, ethereal poetry with a northern sensibility unafraid to confront devastating truths … McGregor is adept at depicting emotions with unassuming language’ Independent

‘These unnerving splinters depicting ordinary people in crisis, often against the fathomless landscape of the Fens, make for an outstanding collection from a great writer’ Metro

‘This is a book of ominous preludes and chilling aftermaths: the incantatory account of a vacationer at a war-ravaged resort in the minutes before he drowns; the Pinter-esque power play of a vicar’s wife whose husband offers shelter to a gallingly manipulative stranger. McGregor stealthily commands our active engagement, scattering crumbs of data for us to pick through, gum-shoe style’ New York Times

‘Electrifyingly original and skilful … McGregor also has a gift for lyricism and shows great skill and fearlessness in his experiments with form. I can’t remember the last time I read a collection of stories this original, this strange, or this powerfully menacing’ Sydney Morning Herald

‘[E]ach tale in this slim, elegant book does something most of us wish would happen to us in real life: It stops us in a humdrum moment and reveals how that small, unnoticed sliver of time can illuminate an entire life’ Oprah.com Book of the Week

‘Jon McGregor’s stories are strange and lovely masterpieces: painfully authentic, inquisitive rather than confrontational, he has a tremendous ability to disturb the surface of everyday things ... Underneath that which is radically quotidian, he captures our unique and unusual selves’ Sarah Hall

For Éireann Lorsung,

& Matthew Welton

Contents

Cover (#uf510c4bf-f8ca-59ec-8df2-6eaf1c2c0116)

Title Page (#uaeed4c17-3fb1-50d7-be04-c94896569eac)

Copyright

Praise for This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

Dedication (#ucb212278-5af6-5cd7-bcd3-5aa0c936ff71)

PART ONE (#u59617ef1-8ca3-5a02-910e-9141b092e967)

That Colour (#uaca2eeb1-3ec2-5d9e-99b9-f4a424512b74)

In Winter The Sky (#u709be858-e5d2-525a-a6a7-a657877575ad)

She Was Looking For This Coat (#u37982f04-871d-5c66-be94-1894840f0d5b)

Looking Up Vagina (#u8ac6289c-ac98-537b-8cac-eeb3fe595198)

Keeping Watch Over The Sheep (#u95c0166f-5ea6-5073-a891-4a91dd2130b7)

Airshow (#ud834fd52-56d2-50bd-b19b-22b9dfa9378a)

We Were Just Driving Around (#u1e8e19de-a87e-50a5-b418-927900fc1507)

PART TWO (#ue6e3d468-4fc1-58a7-8b4a-e9f88423f085)