Falling. Weight. Silence. White. Mouth full. Snow pack tight. Wait. Up. Down. Floating. Low thing. Snow sling. Heart beat slow snow low light gone. Footsteps little far. Footsteps big near. Shout. Pull. Fight. Shout. Pull over, turn over. Breath. Big breath. Mouth open, cold air. Lungs burst. Breath, breath, breath. Stand. Lean. Fall.
Lean Fall Stand opens with three members of an Antarctic expedition team separated in a sudden storm and my heart and mind started jitterbugging; this is right in my wheelhouse. The narrative became more exciting, I was all in with the flashbacks to where these people came from and what their daily grind was like at the field station, and then the narrative swerved and became something else; and then it swerved again. Like its three part title, Lean Fall Stand is in three parts, and while it didn’t turn out to be the story I thought it would be, it turned out to be so much more; just exactly as I should have expected from the fascinating mind of Jon McGregor. A story that is ultimately about people and their need to create meaning through shared experience and storytelling, I ended up loving the whole thing; spoilers beyond here. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Remain calm. Stay in place. Make contact. He shouldn’t have put down the radio. He shouldn’t have moved away from Luke. He shouldn’t have agreed with Doc’s idea about climbing Priestley Head just for the sake of a photograph. He’d let himself get distracted by the scenery. Doc kept pretending to be blasé about it, but it was hard not to just stop and stare. All that ice and snow and sea and sky. Glaciers and ridges and icebergs and scree. Weathering and wind-form and shear. The air so clear that distances shrank and all the colours shone.
The expeditionary team is made up of “Doc” — a thirty season veteran of Antarctica who acts as a “general technical assistant” for visiting scientists — and the two post-doc researchers who have been sent to Station K to update mapping data with advanced GPS equipment. Although Doc’s role is supportive, he likes to act like the one in charge (while insisting he’s only asking for his experience to be respected), and the two younger men feel like they need to humour Doc and his desire to tell stories about the old days and engage them in word games and team-building when they’d rather be staring at their screens. Nearing the end of their time together, Doc agrees they can go on a recreational outing to take some last pictures, and after having made several decisions that didn’t quite follow the official rules, the three are separated in a driving storm. Doc’s decision-making becomes further impaired, peril closes in from all sides, and when the first section (Lean) is finished, the second section (Fall) begins and we learn that Doc had suffered a stroke on the ice and is now in a hospital in Santiago; his wife, Anna, is urged to get on the next flight to Chile.
Bridget had wanted to know what she meant, about not wanting Robert to come home. Where else was he going to go? I don’t know what I mean, Bridge. I just mean I don’t think I’m ready. 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. Is it not a bit late for all that now, love?
The rest of the book (including the third part, Stand) are about Doc (known as Robert at home) and his struggles with stroke-induced aphasia and learning to communicate again. Everything about his return to homelife (his relationship with a self-sufficient wife who had been happy to live without him for a part of every year, the adult children who had always been vaguely proud of their Dad but who don’t come around much anymore, the inquiry into Doc’s role in the opening event) throw ironic light on the person the reader was led to believe he was in the first section. As an animated storyteller — boring the post-docs with stories that had been twenty years old when Doc went on his first expedition — the support group that Anna eventually brings him to (based on a group that McGregor himself had been associated with) made for a fascinating and emotionally satisfying pathway to an ending for the narrative; these parts all meshed for me. (And I loved all the ironically interrelated bits between the three sections: the white noise that sounds like applause, and then the applause when it comes; the group learning physical ways to convey meaning and Luke teasing Robert that with wifi installed at Station K, there would be no more group charades; every instance of stalled conversations, the roar of sudden silence after a storm, the quiet of the Meeting House.) Ultimately, Lean Fall Stand is a smartly constructed book about the human need for storytelling, and while it may not have been the thrilling adventure tale that the opening set me up for, I was told a more meaningful story in the end.
