So What Sort Of Things Happen To Someone Like You?

Short stories are rather welcome as lunch company or when I've an hour to spare between classes. Written in plain language in the today's context, Jon McGregor's 'This isn't the sort of thing that happens to someone like you' is easy to understand in its ordinary setting and venues, and the stark ominous tone is appreciated. In his writing, less is truly more.

The stories are evenly paced, some might even be slow. But in its mundane development, the events in a character's life often takes a turn for the worse, and in that, there's some form of resignation, if not defeated acceptance. (More about the locations described in the book are detailed here on the author's website. Read reviews here, here and here.)

The many seemingly mundane-normal short stories belie some rather grim themes. That's the genius of Jon McGregor. Often, I find myself re-reading a story just to feel the emotions again, deeper. The first two stories that begin the collection- 'That Colour' and 'In Winter The Sky', bear content that already hits the reader's nerves with its achingly sweet portion on the love between two different sets of husband and wife, telling of their lives through suggested illness, misspent youth, adult responsibility and sins. One of my favorites takes place in Stickford, titled, 'The Chicken And The Egg'. All about a man's obsession with not eating chicken eggs for fear that when he breaks it open, he'll find a "little baby chicken foetus curled up inside. Dead." It also quietly speaks of how his phobia led to his divorce when his wife was "what he would call notably unsympathetic." All very sad, but just that bit bordering on hilarity.

In a place near the beach at Sutton-on-Sea, 'French Tea' is poignant in its unremarkableness. Narrated by a server in a cafe, it starts off with a ramble, focusing on the last customer of the lunch hour, a lady with a pot of tea. It tells of how she goes on and on about what constitutes a proper pot of tea, complaining how difficult it is to find good tea nowadays, and how she was once served tea using water from a coffee machine, and how in England, people make tea with boiling water, unlike what they do in France, and she doesn't care for French tea. I was wondering where the story was going, until I got to the last page,

'Take my daughter,' she says. 'She's off working in some country or other. Doesn't seem to have broadened her mind. She's been gone nearly a year now and she's barely even written. Don't even rightly know where she is. And you can bet your bottom dollar she's not getting a decent cup of teap. This is a decent cup of tea. This is a proper cup of tea. This is what you want to expect when you ask for a tea. A pot and a jug and some good china. It's important to know what to expect. You expect to get what you expect. You don't get that when you go away. You don't know what to expect. Leaving the bag on the saucer like that, with the water going cold. And you only have to come back.'