From the Bookshelf of 21st Century Literature…

Lean Fall Stand

Jon McGregor

Start date: April 1, 2023

Finish date: April 30, 2023

Discussion: 4/23 Lean Fall Stand

Discussion leader: Bretnie

Why we're reading this: April 2023 Open Pick
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4/23 Lean Fall Stand

Lean Fall Stand - full book discussion, spoilers ok
By Bretnie · 43 posts · 74 views

last updated May 01, 2023 04:53PM

Lean Fall Stand - background, no spoilers
By Bretnie · 11 posts · 44 views

last updated Apr 07, 2023 04:23PM

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Jan 12, 2021 Paul Fulcher rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021, net-galley

I’ve got a lot of work to do. They’re going to have me filling out carer assessment forms. I don’t want to be a carer; I never even really wanted to be a wife.

Lean Fall Stand opens in the Antarctic and with an interesting nod to Rachel Cusk:

Doc had gone off on the other skidoo and climbed up Priestley Head, to give the picture perspective. Without someone in the frame there was no way to capture the scale of this place. He’d been struggling with it since they’d first arrived. In the pictures he’ I’ve got a lot of work to do. They’re going to have me filling out carer assessment forms. I don’t want to be a carer; I never even really wanted to be a wife.

Lean Fall Stand opens in the Antarctic and with an interesting nod to Rachel Cusk:

Doc had gone off on the other skidoo and climbed up Priestley Head, to give the picture perspective. Without someone in the frame there was no way to capture the scale of this place. He’d been struggling with it since they’d first arrived. In the pictures he’d taken so far, everything looked too small. The distant mountains. The ridges on either side of the valley. The glacier. The icebergs creaking against each other, with the light turning bluely inside them.

This phenomenon was first recorded by the photographer Herbert Ponting who in 1911 joined Captain Scott's, ultimately ill-fated, Terra Nova Expedition. Stephen J. Pyne in his The Ice: A Journey To Antarctica described the problem as one of “annihilated perspective”, a term that Cusk was then to use to describe her innovative Outline/Transit/Cusk trilogy.

The Lean section of the novel tells the story of a modern day, but similarly ill-fated, polar trip. Three researchers in a remote polar station get separated in a sudden storm, struggling to locate or even communicate with each other.

This part of the novel is a little Boys’ Own and when one of the party, ‘Doc’ (Robert), is felled with a blow to the back of the neck seems to be heading to Ice Station Zebra territory. But as Doc’s own thoughts and verbal communication become scrambled it becomes clear his assailant is internal, not external.

The second section, Fall, was much my favourite. It is a moving and realistic account, told from the perspective of Doc/Robert’s wife, of recovery from a stroke and the associated communication difficulties.

She had to return a call from the speech and language service, and confirm the first home visit. She had to contact someone at the Institute, and talk to them about Robert’s sick pay. She had to apply for an extension on her compassionate leave. She had to talk to somebody at the Institute about arranging a visit for Robert, who was desperate to get to the office and see people. He was under the impression that he would soon be returning to work. She had to find a way of discussing how difficult this might be. She had to reply to Luke Adebayo, who had asked if he could visit. She had to let Robert’s sister know when she could come and stay, and reply to a string of other text messages asking for news. She had to pull out the dishwasher and unblock the drainage hose. She had to wash the laundry again because she’d left it sitting too long in the machine. When she made dinner she had to cook the onions in margarine because there was no oil and she couldn’t get to the shops. She had to carry the dinner up to Robert on a tray, and cut up his food, and sit with him while he ate. She had to air the room, again.
...
‘Robert. I’m not going to argue. I don’t want us to argue. But I’ve made some lunch and I’m not going to carry it upstairs.’ She turned around and left the room. She went into the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water and screamed into a folded towel.

The third and final section, Stand, builds on the themes of the earlier parts and provides a wider lens, as Robert attends a speech therapy and rehabilitation course with a number of other stroke victims. The story is told with compassion and the exploration of both different communication difficulties (such as fluent aphasia) and different ways to overcome them (song, mime, dance) is interesting and feels well researched. However in literary terms this was the least successful part of the novel for me, as I found the shifting points of view rather unsatisfactory and the climax, with the course attendees telling their stories via different mediums, felt rather better suited for (indeed perhaps aimed at?) a film script than the written page.

Overall, a well-told and compassionate story but a little disappointing given the anticipation I had from the incredible Reservoir 13. 3.5 stars. ...more

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May 22, 2021 Sara G rated it it was amazing

“Lean Fall Stand” opens with a man, Thomas, dropping to his knees as a storm bears down upon him. He is in Antarctica as part of a mapping expedition, and, after only three weeks on the ice, he is still unprepared for a storm of this intensity. Robert “Doc” Wright, his technical guide, is assigned to use his thirty years of Antarctic experience to keep Thomas and his mapping partner Luke safe from dangers like this. Unfortunately, when the storm starts, Doc is atop a faraway ridge, slipping off “Lean Fall Stand” opens with a man, Thomas, dropping to his knees as a storm bears down upon him. He is in Antarctica as part of a mapping expedition, and, after only three weeks on the ice, he is still unprepared for a storm of this intensity. Robert “Doc” Wright, his technical guide, is assigned to use his thirty years of Antarctic experience to keep Thomas and his mapping partner Luke safe from dangers like this. Unfortunately, when the storm starts, Doc is atop a faraway ridge, slipping off the edge. The narrative whips the reader along, as fast and fierce as the storm itself. I didn’t know that McGregor was capable of writing an adventure thriller, but I loved it. I was all in for 300 pages of danger on the ice.

Then McGregor said, “That’s too simple. I can do so much more.” A third of the way in, the tone changes, and McGregor proceeds to use aphasiac poetry for a meditation on the power of storytelling. “Well,” I thought, “now you are just showing off.” By the end I was in tears, and also angry that a writer could be this good.

Despite the more frantic start to this novel, it is still very much a McGregor novel, told using negative space as much as its positive counterpart. Antarctica is a better match for his style than the English countryside. The Antarctic landscape and “Lean Fall Stand” both require our brains’ perception centers to work differently in order to comprehend the story.They both grapple with problems of proportion, and the need to show small details to illuminate the scope. The natural stillness and empty stretches reflecting the gaps in the characters’ understanding of the world around them. In the last section, McGregor turns towards the gaps in our ability to communicate, the aphasiac’s difficulty in finding words a literalization of characters’ difficulty in voicing truths. We begin to understand Doc when he describes how he returns to the ice year after year because it is not empty; sometimes silence is full.
...more

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Sep 15, 2021 LindaJ^ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This book was a fast read for me. It starts with a sudden storm in Antarctica that catches the three men (Thomas, Luke, and Doc/Robert) at Camp K by surprise. This first part of the book - Lean - concerns the storm and what happens to the three men, as well as filling some background about the time the men have spent together. Doc/Robert is the man with experience in Antarctica. Robert and Luke are the newbies. This section sets the stage for the Fall and Stand sections of the book in showing nu ...more

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Jul 12, 2023 Ann rated it really liked it

The blurb didn't lie but I wasn't expecting a recital on here. This book will stick in my head for a while, given the Antarctica setting, caregiving minutia, and therapy for aphasia. ...more

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Apr 02, 2023 Catherine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: antarctica, carework

(Contains spoilers)

A man accustomed to his own competence suffers a stroke in an emergency situation. The emergency is near a research station in Antarctica. Things go badly wrong, of course, obviously.

The first part of the story takes place in the icy landscape of Antarctica, and underlines the precarious existence of man in this environment. It is beautiful and moving. The rest is moving in another way entirely. A woman, scientist, also accustomed to her own way of life, is suddenly the care ...more

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Sep 18, 2022 dre rated it it was amazing

Wow.

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Mar 16, 2023 Bretnie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

What an interesting, thought-provoking book! At first I felt like the shift between "lean" and "fall" was a bait and switch - shifting from an adventure story to something completely different, but once I settled into the bigger themes of the book, I enjoyed the shift. ...more

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