Even the Dogs, by Jon McGregor

Jon McGregor’s debut, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002 and won both the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award in the following year. So Many Ways to Begin, his second novel, was on the Booker longlist in 2006 and last month his third book, Even the Dogs (which was published in 2010), won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

McGregor’s talent is formidable, his purpose is serious and his discipline is exemplary: this novel turns an unflinching gaze on its subject — a group of homeless drug addicts in a depressed Midlands town — and expects an equal commitment from the reader. ‘I wanted to write,’ McGregor has said, ‘without making concessions to how easy it was going to be to read — to people’s squeamishness.’ He has achieved his intention to write without compromise, but the greater test is the one he sets himself: to make that writing compelling.