Product Description

"This novel owes as much to poetry as it does to prose. Its opening, an invocation of the life of the city, is strongly reminiscent of Auden's "Night Mail" in its hypnotic portrait of industrialised society An assured debut" - Erica Wagner, "The Times". On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence - street cricket, barbecues, painting windows. A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever. Jon McGregor's first novel brilliantly evokes the histories and lives of the people in the street to build up an unforgettable human panorama. Breathtakingly original, humane and moving, "If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things" is an astonishing debut. "The work of a burning new talent Jon MacGregor writes like a lyrical angel" - "Daily Mail".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2596 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
"If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is a dream of a novel" Erica Wagner, The Times "You won't read anything much more poignant than this" William Leith, Daily Telegraph 'Even as it is shadowed by disaster, McGregor's careful prose is sharpened by anticipation and expectation. This is a novel of wonders' Observer 'Overflows with prose as poetry a beautiful novel unexpected, shocking, moving' Big Issue

I would say that Jon McGregor's debut novel is as melodic and gentle as Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It may be a cliche to say that, but McGregor's pen is strong with the enthusiasm of youth which the great American writer once shared. This is a book tantalizingly rich in observation, describing a world we all know, or think we know: a world which is so familiar that we do not see it most of the time. The people and the places and the emotions are ones we all encounter. Take any passage at random and the poetry rises up and touches you. The more common the scene, the more effective: 'Outside, a streetcleaner whirrs past, brushes spinning and skidding across the tarmac, grit and glass and paper skipping up into its innards. The driver stares sleepily ahead, sunglasses curled across his face, lips mouthing the words of the song on the radio, I'll be there for you when the rain starts to fall.' The detail is brilliant yet ordinary, and the debris of most novels is left aside. We are not told the names of most of the characters, or the name of the street, of even the name of the town. The uncluttered canvas allows the real action takes over. It's the last day of summer and, against this backdrop of ordinariness, something quite terrible and astonishing is about to take place. No one in the street who witnesses it will ever be the same again. Jon McGregor's prose is refreshing and is touched by innocence, but at the same time it is bolstered by a strong vein of maturity. His is a name to watch out for. Tahir Shah is the author of In Search of King Solomon's Mines. (Kirkus UK)

A prizewinning first novel from England is an impressionist portrait of neighbors on one city block. Listen, coos the narrator, listen, with a faint echo, at the start, of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. Thomas was evoking a Welsh village, while McGregor is summoning the nightsounds of an English city. It's summertime. There's a street of row houses. Neighbors are running errands, hanging out, doing chores. Then something terrible happens, and the neighbors share the horror, transfixed; the event is not described until the end. Small kids improvise a cricket game with a milk crate; older hip kids return from all-night clubbing to smoke weed. A lonely archaeology student collects sidewalk odds and ends ("urban archiving"). A man with ruined hands listens respectfully to his daughter's visions of angels. An old couple step out jauntily to celebrate their 55th anniversary. With the neighbors as a backdrop, the spotlight turns to a character we'll call The Girl. She's just learned she is pregnant, the result of a marvelous one-night-stand in Scotland. She met the student only once, too, at a party, when she was high; they arranged a date that she forgot, though the student never forgot her. His twin brother shows up and drives The Girl to her parents. As she reveals the secret of her pregnancy, she learns her mother's own well-kept secret. Secrets are legion on the block. The old man has not told his wife he's terminally ill, and Michael has yet to tell The Girl the secret of his brother's disappearance. Delicate little clues tell us that some of the neighbors are from the subcontinent, but color and ethnicity aren't important here; the "remarkable things" of the title are the small moments of the here-and-now that rival angelic visions. Those are what McGregor is celebrating. The halting conversations are overdone, and that street horror is problematic, but 26-year-old McGregor's sharp eye and broad sympathies show a true novelistic sensibility and a sizable talent. (Kirkus Reviews)

Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail, 24th August 2002
"McGregor's publishers must be openly rejoicing …'If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things’ is the work of a burning new talent."

Sunday Times 22nd September 2002
"moving vision of contemporary Britain, a remarkably accomplished first novel, Booker-longlisted."

Customer Reviews

The ordinary becoming the extraordinary "Wonderful"
I found this book very different in many ways. Taking everyday events and highlighting the finer nuances of people was an inspiration and a fascinating look into ordinary people's lives - it was like looking through a keyhole into people's private relationships and actions. What I was left with was how the ordinary often can become the extraordinary, especially when you look and observe with an eye to see beyond the surface details and see the unique individuals. What was interesting also was as you follow the different lives of the street there is an underlining tragedy that has touched everyone in the street and it's only near the end that it is revealed to you.

The voice of inexperience?
I knew nothing about the author when I read this book - I bought it mainly on the basis of favourable reviews. My first impression was that the prose style seemed rather like the work of a talented sixth-former. Yes, the writing has a poetic quality, but it lacks economy. It seems to strain to create many images that might have been more selectively chosen for their impact, and more effectively drawn in fewer words. The main problem, however, comes with the premise of the story itself. Detailing the minutiae of everyday life, as this novel does, requires great skill, maturity and insight in order to make the events 'remarkable.' It needs to tell the reader more than they already consciously know about human behaviour/relationships. I felt the novel failed in this respect.

After finishing the novel, I found out that the author was in his mid-twenties when the book was published, and that this was his debut novel. With that in mind, I wished that he'd approached this work as his forth or fifth novel. While insight doesn't necessarily come with age, perhaps a little more experience would have made this brave but fundamentally flawed novel a truly moving one.

Awful
Read this book thinking it would be an intelligent read. Really did not like it very confusing and nothing becomes clear at anypoint. All a bit wishy washy for me.