“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life,” 80-year-old Robert Frost said. “It goes on.” The American poet’s remark, with its indissoluble blend of pessimism and optimism, would have made a good epigraph for Jon McGregor’s previous novel, the 2017 Costa-winner Reservoir 13. It would also work just as well for Lean Fall Stand.
Reservoir 13 began with a teenage girl’s disappearance from an English village, leading the reader to expect, not unreasonably, that her fate would eventually be revealed. But instead of telling us what happened, the novel told us only what happened next — which was, indeed, that life went on. Over 13 chapters, each covering a year, McGregor observed with quiet detachment the villagers going about