Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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Jon McGregor wrote his first novel while living on a narrowboat in Nottingham. Published in 2002, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things follows one ordinary street through one summer’s day and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Fifteen years later Reservoir 13 followed a Derbyshire village through thirteen years after a girl goes missing, and won the Costa Novel Award. In between came a novel about addiction told by the people around a dead man, Even the Dogs, which won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2012. His subject is the same throughout: what happens to ordinary people after something has gone wrong. This guide covers his 7 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 2002–2021 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Jon McGregor has published seven books: five novels and two books of stories. The best known are Reservoir 13 (2017), which won the Costa Novel Award, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002) and Even the Dogs (2010), winner of the International Dublin Literary Award. Start with Reservoir 13; then read on for the stranger, more formally daring books around it.
Where to Start with Jon McGregor
If you want his defining book
→ Reservoir 13 (2017) — a missing girl and thirteen years of village life.
If you want where it all began
→ If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002) — one street, one summer’s day.
If you want his boldest experiment
→ Even the Dogs (2010) — addiction told by the people who were there.
If you want something short first
→ This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You (2012) — thirty stories, some under a page.
7 Jon McGregor Books, in Order
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
The residents of one street in an unnamed English city go through the last day of summer, their small routines converging on a single tragic event. A parallel story set later follows a young woman who used to live there, now pregnant, trying to make sense of that day. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002 and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book.
So Many Ways to Begin
David Carter, a museum curator in Coventry, has kept objects from his own life since childhood. His marriage is strained and his ambition to run his own museum is stalling when his aunt, who has dementia, lets slip a family secret that sends him looking for where he came from. Each chapter opens with the description of an object from his collection. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Even the Dogs
The body of Robert, a middle-aged alcoholic, is found in his flat in an unnamed city. The scenes around his body are told in a flat, documentary style, while the addicts, drifters and long-term unemployed who knew him, among them his estranged daughter Laura, piece together how he got there in fragmented, often unpunctuated voices. It won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2012, with judges calling it a “fearless experiment”.
This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
Thirty stories set in Lincolnshire and the drained fenland around it, ranging from a single sentence to about 8,700 words. A woman is convinced she is about to die after a sugar beet hits her windscreen in “Wires”; a modern Noah prepares for a flood in “If It Keeps on Raining”. Both of those stories were runners-up for the BBC National Short Story Award, and the book was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
Reservoir 13
Rebecca Shaw, a thirteen-year-old staying with her parents in a holiday cottage, goes missing in a village in the Derbyshire hills at New Year. The search fails, and the novel stays with the village instead: thirteen chapters, one for each year, nearly all opening with the words “At midnight when the year turned”, as marriages, jobs, the cricket club and the seasons go on. It won the Costa Novel Award and Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.
The Reservoir Tapes
Fifteen linked stories commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and first broadcast in 2017, set in the same village in the days around the girl’s disappearance. Each one looks at a different villager’s secrets and past, and how they connect to the missing girl and to each other. It works as a prequel to Reservoir 13.
Lean Fall Stand
Robert “Doc” Wright, a veteran field guide on Antarctic research trips, has a stroke during a storm while two younger colleagues are out in the snow, and one of them does not come back. The novel then moves to England, where his wife Anna, a Cambridge oceanographer, becomes his carer, and Doc, left with aphasia, joins a group of people relearning how to speak.
In What Order to Read Jon McGregor
Only two of his books are connected: The Reservoir Tapes is set in the same village as Reservoir 13 and takes place around the time of the disappearance. Read Reservoir 13 first, because the stories assume you know what the search was for. Everything else stands alone.
Publication order shows how his form developed: one day on one street in the first novel, a life told through objects in the second, a chorus of damaged voices in Even the Dogs, thirteen years in Reservoir 13, and in Lean Fall Stand a man who has lost the words to tell his own story.
A reading path
1. Reservoir 13 (2017)
2. The Reservoir Tapes (2017)
3. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002)
4. Even the Dogs (2010)
5. Lean Fall Stand (2021)
The years · 1976–2021
Quick facts about Jon McGregor
- Known for
- Jon McGregor is known for novels about ordinary communities in the aftermath of a disaster, told in formally inventive ways.
- 1976
- Born in Bermuda
- 2017
- Reservoir 13
- 2021
- Lean Fall Stand
- Born
- 1976, Bermuda
- Grew up
- Norwich and Thetford, Norfolk
- Education
- Bradford University, Media Technology and Production
- Works
- Professor of Creative Writing, University of Nottingham, since 2012; editor of The Letters Page
- Major prizes
- International Dublin Literary Award (2012), Costa Novel Award (2017)
- Lives
- Nottingham
The red mark is 2017: Reservoir 13, which won the Costa Novel Award.
How Jon McGregor Writes: The Aftermath, Not the Event
McGregor keeps the dramatic event at the edge of the frame. In Reservoir 13 the missing girl is never the centre; as he told the Nottingham magazine LeftLion in 2017, “these sorts of stories usually end with a dead body and I wanted to avoid that.” What he follows instead is the street, the village or the family that has to go on afterwards.
Each book sets itself a formal rule. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things keeps to a single day on a single street; So Many Ways to Begin opens each chapter with an object from a museum catalogue; Even the Dogs is told in fragmented, often unpunctuated voices; Reservoir 13 gives each year one chapter and the same opening words, and mixes the villagers’ lives with the nesting birds, floods and harvests of the same twelve months, without conventional dialogue.
He has named Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and Richard Brautigan among his influences, and the short stories show it: half of the thirty in This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You are under 1,000 words. Lean Fall Stand is his plainest book on the surface, in close third person, but it turns the old question of how ordinary people put things into words into its subject, through a man who has lost his speech.
Watch
Jon McGregor on Lean Fall Stand at the Swindon Festival of Literature
Jon McGregor talks with Sara-Jane Arbury about his novel Lean Fall Stand, posted in May 2021. From the official Swindon Festival of Literature channel.
Frequently asked questions about Jon McGregor’s books
How many books has Jon McGregor written?
Seven: five novels and two books of stories. The novels are If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways to Begin, Even the Dogs, Reservoir 13 and Lean Fall Stand; the story books are This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You and The Reservoir Tapes.
What are Jon McGregor’s books in order?
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002), So Many Ways to Begin (2006), Even the Dogs (2010), This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You (2012), Reservoir 13 (2017), The Reservoir Tapes (2017) and Lean Fall Stand (2021).
Where should I start with Jon McGregor?
Reservoir 13 (2017). It is his most widely read and most awarded book, and it shows his method at its clearest: a disappearance at the start, then thirteen years of the village carrying on.
What is Jon McGregor’s most famous book?
Reservoir 13, which won the 2017 Costa Novel Award and Fiction Book of the Year at the 2018 British Book Awards, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His debut, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, is the other book he is best known for.
Is Reservoir 13 a crime novel?
Not really. It opens with a missing thirteen-year-old, Rebecca Shaw, but the novel is about the village in the years that follow. McGregor told LeftLion in 2017 that “the disappearance of the girl is an excuse to talk about community.”
Should I read The Reservoir Tapes before or after Reservoir 13?
After. The fifteen stories, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2017, are set around the time of the disappearance and work as a prequel, but they assume you already know the village and its people.
Has Jon McGregor won the Booker Prize?
No. He has been longlisted three times: for If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002), So Many Ways to Begin (2006) and Reservoir 13 (2017). His major wins are the International Dublin Literary Award (2012, for Even the Dogs) and the Costa Novel Award (2017, for Reservoir 13).
What is Lean Fall Stand about?
An Antarctic field guide, Robert “Doc” Wright, has a stroke during a storm in which one of his younger colleagues is lost. The second half follows Doc and his wife Anna in England as he lives with aphasia and tries to learn to speak again.
Where is Jon McGregor from?
He was born in Bermuda in 1976 and grew up in Norwich and Thetford in Norfolk. He lives in Nottingham, where he has been Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham since 2012.
Is Jon McGregor still writing?
Yes. His most recent novel is Lean Fall Stand (2021). He also edits The Letters Page, the University of Nottingham’s literary journal.
Footnotes
- Jon McGregor — Wikipedia
- Jon McGregor — University of Nottingham, School of English
- The real meaning behind Jon McGregor’s village tale — New Statesman, 2017
- Jon McGregor on his latest novel, Reservoir 13 — LeftLion, 2017
- Learning to say cat — London Review of Books, 2021
- Review of This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You — Numero Cinq, 2012
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“In a sense, the disappearance of the girl is an excuse to talk about community.”
— Jon McGregor on Reservoir 13, interview with LeftLion (2017)
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