-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Stories
by Jon McGregor
From the publication of his first Booker-nominated novel at the age of twenty-six, Jon McGregor's fiction has consistently been defined by lean poetic language, a keen sense of detail, and insightful characterization. Now, after publishing three novels, he's turning his considerable talent toward short fiction. The stories in this beautifully wrought collection explore a specific physical world and the people who inhabit it.
Set among the lowlands and levees, the fens and ditches that mark the spare landscape of eastern England, the stories expose lives where much is buried, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won. The narrators of these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell us what they believe to be important-in language inflected with the landscape's own understatement-while the real stories lie in what they unwittingly let slip.
A man builds a tree house by a river in preparation for a coming flood. A boy sets fire to a barn. A pair of itinerant laborers sit by a lake and talk,while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war. This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You is an intricate exploration of isolation, self-discovery, and the impact of place on the human psyche.
Paperback original
"The majority of these tales... are full of quirky characters and accessible enough to hold general readers' interest, while the other pieces will entice fans of experimental literary fiction." - Publishers Weekly
"McGregor gives us 30 stories here, ranging from a single sentence to dense (and intense) re-creations of relationships. Impressive and unconventional fiction." - Kirkus Reviews
"Throughout, omissions and ellipses set the mind racing like a treacherous tide, rushing in to fill the gaps. Not a book for bedtime, then. But very, very good indeed." - Daily Mail (UK)
"...[R]ead Jon McGregor's new book. Its verve, its inventiveness, its sheer quiet audacity will reassure you that the short story is alive, well and reaching new heights." - The Guardian (UK)
"Jon McGregor writes with frightening intelligence and impeccable technique. Every page is a revelation." - Teju Cole, author of Open City
This information about This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways To Begin, and Even The Dogs. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was the runner-up in the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham, England. Visit him at www.jonmcgregor.com.
If you liked This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, try these:
by Natasha Brown
Published 2026
Remember—words are your weapons, they're your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power from a "powerful new voice in British Literature" (The Sunday Times).
by Carys Davies
Published 2025
A stunning, exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to "clear" the last remaining inhabitant, who has no intention of leaving—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.
by Daniel Mason
Published 2024
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
