I don’t fully understand the appeal of Macgregor who writes well but without major impact. This latest is atmospheric yet delivers not very much. My view of the author’s gifts remains unchanged.

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor
Rating: 4 stars

Summary: A veteran Antarctica explorer is caught with his team in a blinding wind storm. As Robert is suffering rom a sudden powerful stroke a team member is carried away on the ice flow that broke off. The story follows the recovery and speculation into what happened to cause the death of a member of Roberts team.

Comments: An interesting read. Seems to be drawn out in Roberts recovery. But for some reason I couldn’t stop reading.

This is a story about communication.  Robert "Doc" Wright is a long-time veteran of field work in Antarctica.  He's made several research trips over the course of several decades, leaving behind his wife, Anna, and two children for months or longer at a time.  The novel opens with Doc on his most recent trip, alongside two newbies, Luke and Thomas.  Things are going smoothly ... until they are not.  When this research expedition goes horribly wrong, it has far-reaching and unexpected consequences for the three men, their families, and others in their orbit.

This book was excellent.  (Warning: what may be considered spoilers ahead.)  It was a very creative approach to storytelling.  Portraying in writing what it is like to lose one's ability to communicate and how it is experienced by the impacted individual himself and those around them is quite difficult -- but the author here does a magnificent job of doing so in this novel.  I felt as though we, as readers, experienced through Doc what it was like to have an incident that led to cognitive impairment and then to ongoing communication limitations.  The book then switches perspectives, and shows how this is experienced by Doc's caretaker, most notably his wife, Anna.  The description of Antarctica and what it is like to live and work there created a powerful backdrop to the human elements of the story -- and was quite interesting on its own.

Highly recommended!

Wow. This was my first Jon Mcgregor and I now cannot wait to go back to his backlist. The writing is truly exceptional. This is written in three sections and I honestly I enjoyed all three, but Stand blew me away.

Jon McGregor is a master at starting with a big known premise -- a missing-person mystery, say, or in this case, a polar expedition. But then he veers into deft investigation and exploration of the mind. Lean Fall Stand is broken into three parts, each part representing a word in the title. In the crevasses between the words are the quotidian details necessary to examine the power and work of communication, language, and story-telling. I'm a huge Jon McGregor fan. He never leaves you certain of characters' outcomes, only the velocity and trajectory they're on in the final pages. His latest novel did not disappoint me.

[Thanks to Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my opinion.]

A beginning that gets your heart racing and fingers to turning pages eventually turns into a slower tale of one man's attempt to regain a semblance of his prior life. The end is touching and poignant, though the middle section is quite repetitive (though understandably so, given the story elements). Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free ARC.


3.5 rounded to 4

Absolutely beautiful book. Each part is a book unto itself and gorgeously written. I read this as it was recommended by an author friend who said I would love it, and she was correct!

Know that while this begins in Antarctica, that's not the focus of the novel and that you will never know one critical thing. McGregor has written a fascinating and at times painful to read look at recovery from a devastating stroke from the point of view of a spouse caregiver. Doc has spent 30 seasons on the ice as a general dogsbody- he never finished his dissertation- while his wife Anna remained in Cambridge raising their children and doing her own academic research and teaching. He's out on the ice with two younger colleagues when a storm blows up and then he is struck down with the stoke. It's a harrowing passage but more harrowing, in some ways, is Anna's experience with him in the hospital in Santiago and then back home in the UK. Doc is drawn in outline in some ways and it is Anna who is the more fleshed out and sympathetic character. The last section of the novel- Stand- focuses on Doc's work with a support group. It's gorgeously written. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I picked this because I'll read anything set in Antarctica and was initially disappointed to know that there's actually very little about the continent and life there-and I kept reading it because of Anna's compelling voice. Terrific read.

“Too many lemons.”

Way back when I was at university, I ran a summer canoe tripping program for local kids. In small groups, we went on 10-day trips into the interior of Algonquin Park. We paddled, we portaged, we cooked and camped outdoors and we didn’t have radios or satphones. We spent 10 days and went 200 kilometres all on our own steam. It was exhilarating. It was challenging. It was life-changing.

We were fortunate that one of the university’s professors (and great nature author) James Raffan would come to our staff training. He was a scholar in outdoor risk management and he shared with us his “Lemons Theory” which goes like this: when you go out into the wilderness, imagine you’ve pulled the arm on a slot machine and every time you take a risk, you get a lemon. Too many lemons, and something bad is likely to happen. In the program, it helped staff keep kids safe. In my life, it’s become embedded in my way of thinking and I use it to make decisions this day.

Lean Fall Stand is the Lemon Theory in action in one of the most unforgiving environments on earth: Antarctica.

In the beginning of Lean Fall Stand we meet graduate students Luke and Thomas who are in Antarctica for their first time. Working alongside them is longtime expedition guide Robert “Doc” Wright. They are out on the ice and separated when a storm hits. They are all in peril. We don’t entirely know how this has played out when we next find ourselves in a hospital in Santiago, Chile where one of the men has been taken. It appears he’s had a stroke.

The remainder of the book follows his therapy and recovery while, in the background, people are still trying to figure out exactly what happened out on the ice.

I loved the first section in Antarctica and could have read an entire book set there but, of course, that would have missed the point which is, of course, that while overcoming great adversity can happen in remote, dangerous environments, it can also happen in private, at home, surrounded by family. And yet it can be no less heroic.

Lean Fall Stand is a sympathetic depiction of the struggles and successes of stroke patients. It’s about the challenge of finding resolution about what happened and acceptance of a new way of being. McGregor also powerfully explores a carer’s life (his wife Anna): how she’s left on her own to deal with everything and how it consumes her every moment.

Lean Fall Stand came to my attention in Booker longlist predictions and I’m glad to have read it. I flew through this engrossing book and found myself caring about the characters and rooting for them to find peace.

Thank you to Catapult and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Here is another love it or leave it novel by a well known Booker longlisted author. As with Reservoir 13 and If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, it stops the reader in a humdrum moment and reveals how that small, unnoticed sliver of time can illuminate an entire life.. First I'll acknowledge that I am a sucker for fiction and nonfiction set in polar regions. Also, after 50+ years as a speech therapist, the appearance of stroke and aphasia as the mover of the shift from before and after is always fascinating - if well done. And it was well done but even so may not have the same resonance for others.

The first section of the book (entitled “Lean”) begins in Antarctica where Robert (Doc) Wright is serving as general technical assistant to two young researchers. An expedition to take photos ends in tragedy. The second section (entitled “Fall”) focuses on Anna, Robert’s wife, who becomes his primary caregiver as he struggles to recover from a stroke. The final section (entitled “Stand”) centres on an aphasia support group where people are encouraged to explore different methods of communication in order to tell their stories.

Though the three parts might seem to belong to three different genres, they can all be called survival stories connected by the theme of communication. In the Antarctica chapter, there is a lot of miscommunication and broken communication because the men hear only snatches of each other’s voices on their radios. Then Robert’s ability to talk is compromised. In “Fall” Robert is unable to communicate easily, and Anna is given incomplete information about Robert’s condition and treatment. In “Stand” we encounter people who are experiencing different types of aphasia and learning other ways of expressing themselves, including non-verbal communication.

Isolation is also an important element in the three sections. By virtue of their remote location, the Antarctica team is isolated from the outside world, and events cause the three of them to become physically isolated from each other. Anna and Robert, accustomed to living apart, are brought together but remain emotionally isolated and struggle to connect. Everyone in the support group feels isolated because of difficulties communicating with others.

Readers will probably like different sections of the novel for various reasons, but I found something to admire in all parts. “Lean” is an adventure story with lots of action and suspense. It ends with Robert’s stream-of-consciousness which so realistically reflects his fragmented and confused thinking. What is outstanding in “Fall” is not just Robert’s struggle to adapt to his circumstances but also the impact his situation has on others, especially Anna. “Stand” for me was the weakest, but it depicts various types of aphasia and offers hope in showing people adapting to a new way of functioning in the world.

I enjoyed the characterization of Robert and Anna. Robert is a 30-year veteran of expeditions to Antarctica. He enjoys the “pure cold blessing of silence” to be found on the southernmost continent, though he spends evenings entertaining the men with “detailed stories about his early seasons at Station K.” And when he’s home, he talks so much that Anna one time tells him, “Shut the shit up!” This is the man who finds himself in a position where he has lost the ability to tell his stories and “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.” The traits he needed to survive in the challenging conditions of Antarctica, he has to apply to the challenges of his new life. In the opening, he serves to provide perspective to a photo, his size illuminating the scope of Antarctica’s vastness. In the end, he serves to provide a focus on both the enormity of recovery and the immense possibilities.

Like Robert, Anna also enjoys silence; she likes time alone in her garden and attends meetings of the Society of Friends which are held in silence. Then she is faced with caring for a man who struggles to speak. Her life is totally upended when Robert comes home. She is independent and self-sufficient and has become accustomed to living apart from her husband as he spent months of each of the last 30 years in Antarctica. She is a climate change scientist, but her career has to be put on hold so she can care for her husband. She admits to a friend that, “’I don’t know if I want him to come home’” and “’I don’t want to be a carer; I never really wanted to be a wife.’” We see her exhaustion as she helps Robert’s rehabilitation, with little help from social services or their self-absorbed children. She experiences a gamut of emotions: resentment, anger, and frustration.

There is much to unravel in a McGregor novel; his style is sparse, but every word is significant. If unconventional, thought-provoking literary fiction is what you enjoy, this book should be on your to-be-read pile.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Several years ago I was introduced to Jon McGregor via his Reservoir 13 books, together constituting a whole, each written in a totally different style. I knew I had discovered a writer of such talent and perception that he would become a favorite. One of his strengths is the internal life of his characters and how they react to outside influences. On the surface, this novel told in three sections, concerns a tragedy encountered in the Antarctic and its aftermath. His descriptions of weather, as in the Reservoir books, is unparalleled, but here he delves into internal storms in spare prose that doesn't insult the reader. I was reminded, for some reason, of Jim Crace's Being Dead. The stories aren't similar, but something about the style and respect for the reader rings true for me.

I was initially drawn to this book by Nicole Caputo’s brilliant cover, which I now appreciate in more ways than one. LEAN FALL STAND is a captivating novel of broken pieces, physical and psychological, and we examine the consequences of those fractures through the eyes of several connected characters, all of which were drawn with nuance and compassion. From the pure adrenaline of Part One to the slow march toward recovery in Part Three, I was engaged at every step. This was my first Jon McGregor novel, and I’m looking forward to my next.

Many thanks to Catapult and NetGalley for the ARC.

McGregor’s take on this novel resembles one he has used before. The reader begins with what appears to be genre fiction, but eventually finds himself following a community engaged in more quotidian pursuits. His goal and, indeed, his gift, is the portrayal of messy everyday human and natural landscapes. In this instance, high adventure in Antarctica morphs into an examination of what it is like to be and to care for a stroke victim.

Here, his intention is to capture the nuances of communication. He does this remarkably well by exploring instances when words fail. Robert “Doc” Wright, a skilled Antarctica hand, suffers a stroke while conducting field work with two young scientists during a harrowing storm where modes of communication breakdown. Doc’s stroke results in aphasia. With that as his launching pad, McGregor takes a deep dive into what it takes to survive the loss of speech. The heroes are no longer Antarctic explorers, but instead become caregivers and therapists. His subtle theme becomes how communication is more nuanced than just recalling words and ordering them to make sense. In the face of aphasia, the afflicted are urged to employ alternative means to communicate their ideas.

The detachment, threat and inaccessibility of Antarctica — “that cold pure blessing of silence” — serves as an apt counterpoint to what happens back in Cambridge. As the consummate capable loner, Doc Wright finds himself totally dependent on his wife. Anna, a successful research oceanographer, is a person who cherishes her career and the time on her own Doc’s extended assignments in Antarctica provide. She never wanted to be one of those women who accepted a lesser career in support of her family. “I don’t want to be a carer,” she says at one point. “I never even really wanted to be a wife.” Her grit, frankness and determination easily make her the most interesting character in the novel.

McGregor telegraphs his plot structure with his title. The “lean” is the freak storm, the separation of the three men, and Thomas’ eventual loss on a drifting ice floe. Doc’s stroke and aphasia culminate in his loss of the finnicky control he so cherishes. The “fall” comes when Doc returns to the UK. His only useful expressions become “Yes, yes, well obviously of course” “Christ!” and “yes”. He is unable to utter the word “no”. He is now a defeated man, totally dependent on Anna. The “stand” represents Doc’s tentative steps toward rehabilitation. This centers on alternative modes of expression (i.e., movement) over language. Doc’s adventures in Antarctica serve to give him a status in his group he never had while isolated in Antarctica.

McGregor skillfully uses close first-person narration to capture how various lives can turn the everyday into something new and unusual. He succeeds in depicting a frustrating clinical disorder with empathy and humor. His characterizations wonderfully portray the ultimate tragedy of a condition that gives the mistaken impression of mental impairment. Some members of Doc’s group struggle to find the right word, while others fluidly string together words without meaning. Most have access to just a few words (sometimes just curses, followed by apologies). Not unlike his other work, McGregor leaves a lot unsettled in this novel, but he admirably redeems it with crisp depictions of how a community of reflections can meld into an astonishing picture of real life in all its messy glory.

Jon McGregor is one of the finest authors alive. His other books I have read, Reservoir 13 and his follow up Reservoir Tapes are two of the best books I have ever read. Do take a look at my #reviews…

I count his writing as some of the best novels I have read in my life time…

Try to read this author. He will not disappoint…

5 out of 5 stars

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of LEAN, FALL, STAND in exchange for an honest review.

Publication date - September 21, 2021
Posted to Goodreads 8/05/21

Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult for the ARC.

On an Antarctic survey, tragedy strikes. In the aftermath, the guide for this survey, Doc, returns to the UK, this time for good. He and his wife, Anna, try to navigate the unfamiliar, as Doc struggles to remember what happened that fateful day.

This is the first book I've read by McGregor, and it won't be the last. He actually made me enjoy an adventure story. Though, to be fair, it's more about after the trek than during.

The writing was beautiful- I could feel the biting wind and cold toes of Antarctica. I could sympathize with Doc and Anna in their frustration, and I could feel the grief of other characters as they find their way through their own desolate landscape.

5 stars from me.

In Jon McGregor's "Lean Fall Stand" three men are surveying Antartica when disaster ensues. Much of what happened on the ice is locked in Robert "Doc" Wright's mind after he experiences what is believed to be a stroke and has difficulty accessing and communicating the memories of the accident on Station K. Doc was a mainstay on the island- he would travel to Antarctica every year as a guide, and thrived in the environment. He now finds himself on a whole different mine field. His relationship with his wife Anna, which thrived in the arrangement they had where he would be gone for many months of the year is changed dramatically after his stroke. Her career which brings her so much passion is sidelined as she takes over the role as Doc's caregiver.

McGregor does a nice job of highlighting the difficult of communication between Doc and Anna, and there is also the mystery of what happened on Station K (which the reader only gets glimpses of early on). Both Anna and Doc are losing their autonomy, and physical (Doc)/metaphorical (Anna) voices, and struggling with that. I haven't seen many novels that highlighted the difficulty individuals with aphasia have, so it was fascinating.

Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

What a propulsive start to a book! I read straight through the first section, riveted and on the edge of my seat. The main characters are caught in a sudden storm on Antarctica, separated, each struggling for their life. It is horrifying, told through the eyes of a man trapped on floating ice, the man who had to choose between caring for Doc and finding the lost man, and Doc, the veteran, at first in control–before something struck him on the head.

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor doesn’t let the suspense flag. The thirty-three year Antarctica veteran Doc finds his way back to the base camp but his thinking is disorganized, his language confused. When he is found and taken to a hospital in Santiago it is determined that he has had a stroke. He is unable to explain what happened, why the men were separated, why the other two men did not have their satellite phones.

Anna had become accustomed to being a part time wife, with Doc away every year for four or more months at a time. Now, just as she was preparing for an important conference, at the apex of her career, she is overwhelmed by their new relationship: caregiver to her disabled spouse.

McGregor does a marvelous job of taking us into the experience of suffering a stroke and conversely, that of needing to care for a stroke victim who is reduced to the dependence of babyhood. Doc’s speech becomes disorientated after his stroke in Antarctica, and throughout the book he struggles with aphasia. The list of duties Anna must undertake in a typical day is daunting, charting Doc’s medications, helping him with all his bodily needs, changing bedsheets, cleaning up after accidents, keeping him warm, trying to fit in laundry and grocery shopping and answering the phone.

There are no info dumps of information we could Goggle, no lectures about disability. Everything is presented through the characters and the action. It puts this book ahead of other books I have read about disabilities by popular writers.

We are not given a happy ending or a tragic one. Instead, Doc learns new ways to communication to compensate for what he has lost.

And that is all we can ask for, any of us, when something we value is taken from us. Our sight, our hearing, our mobility, our speech.

It is the daily miracle of just waking and girding oneself to do what you can not that inspires us. My mom was severely crippled by psoriatic arthritis after the birth of my brother, her neck immobile, the joints of her hands inflamed so she could barely lift and hold her baby. She learned new ways to hold a paintbrush, her knitting needles, in hands permanently constricted. This is courage. This is inspiration.

We are spun off balance, leaning into a fall. And, with help and support and determination, we learn to stand again. We rise.

I received a free egalley from Catapult through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Robert “Doc” Wright has decades of experience as a general technical assistant in Antarctica. Usually Doc operates by the book, but on this occasion he and his two new colleagues relax the rules slightly and exactly when a severe storm suddenly comes upon them. They were never supposed to split up and now they’re all trying to remember their conflicting training for situations like this. Remain calm. Find shelter. Don’t wander. Keep moving.

Robert suffered a stroke during the storm and the rest of the book explores how he and his wife navigate their new way of life. And they are forced to do it on their own with very limited professional help. Anna is struggling because she’s always been very independent and career-motivated and didn’t mind long stretches of time without her husband around. It examines Anna’s new role as “carer” and Robert’s frustration at his reduced mobility and aphasia.

This story is told with multiple POVs, some of which are brutally honest. Ableism is a theme in this book. I was flabbergasted that some of the characters expected Robert to recover quickly and be back to his old self in no time at all. While there were other characters didn’t appreciate the progress he was making.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I found myself captivated by it and liked the disability representation even though some characters had ableist notions.

Thank you to Netgalley and Catapult for this advance copy in exchange for my honest opinions.

An incredibly moving fictional foray into trying to overcome the odds. Lean Fall Stand starts out with an epic journey—and ends with an epic journey, but of a much different sort. McGregor captures trying to remap the neural networks after a stroke in such a masterful way, you feel you are right there, struggling alongside. Caregivers and families will immediately recognize the complex portrayal of their struggles and milestones as well. This is not an easy read—but well worth the journey.