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    If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
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    If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
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    If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
    Ebook280 pages11 hours

    If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

    By Jon McGregor

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    '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
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateApr 2, 2012
    ISBN9781408834428
    Unavailable
    If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
    Author

    Jon McGregor

    Jon McGregor is the author of five novels and two story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award, and has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters. He was born in Bermuda in 1976, grew up in Norfolk, and now lives in Nottingham.

    Read more from Jon Mc Gregor

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    Reviews for If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

    4/5

    365 ratings31 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This was wonderful. The way the plot developed was so inspiring, & very interesting. The writing was so beautiful, poetic & it really captured suburban life. The author takes unremarkable day-to-day thing & makes them remarkable, painting a vivid picture of a small community within a city. The other plotline was also very well dealt with, & I felt very accurate, especially as it was written by a man & the issues were so very much personal to a woman. It did have a slightly fantastical ending, but the rest of the book was so true to normal British life, & the nature of the conclusion so upsetting, that such an ending actually really worked. Definitely one of my favourites.
    • 5/5
      An ordinary day in a street, with ordinary lives. There are almost no names. It is the woman at number 19, the man painting his windows at number 25, the guy with the pierced eyebrow. You gradually build up an understanding of each of these people. I love the deeply sympathetic portrayal of so many people and their varied lives. I love that the book's structure is not how a book is normally structured.
    • 3/5
      Unfortunately nobody did.
    • 4/5
      I found this book on the "staff picks" shelf at the library; I was intrigued by the title, and it looked well-read, so I snagged it. I loved it, found it poignant and lyrical and astonishingly beautiful. It has virtually no plot, lots of nameless characters, almost no punctuation, a bit of poetic formatting and a few other "literary" quirks that would often put me right off. (In fact a fair number of reviewers here have said, in effect, "Oh, please. A little less cleverness, mate.") For some reason in this case, I fell right into the seeming hodgepodge of character vignettes and back-and-forth action without minding the overtly prize-worthy style at all. The action all takes place on one day in one urban neighborhood in a city that has no name either, but there are references to the back-stories of many of the characters. Eventually we see the remarkable bits peeking out of the ordinary and oft-repeated events of their lives.Review written in June 2012
    • 4/5
      Beautiful words.
    • 5/5
      I had to read this book in incredibly small doses because every time I picked it up my heart would start clenching and clenching and it would feel too big for my chest. There are small truths that McGregor feeds me that makes me see and panic and want to throw the knowledge that I know out back into the unknown and to gather it up greedily and store it in me. I've read reviews where people don't like the scatteredness of the book, where they don't like the fact that there are too many people, too many stories, too many things to read about. But this is what it is: a fact. There are so many people, stories, things around us and we don't notice. Here, McGregor is laying them in front of us saying look and take notice and we can't not take notice anymore and it makes us uncomfortable and maybe, it is from this discomfort that spawns dislike. It is true that these people - nameless, most of them - is less memorable than, say, the protagonist, and their presence is ephemeral, and I don't know them as much as I'd like to. But, I recognize them, I recognize what they are going through, and somehow, I think it's enough.
    • 3/5
      A random borrowed pick. This was a struggle for me and I was glad to finish it. I didn't like the nameless aspect and the 'revelations' at the end didn't live up to much. I got quite impatient with it but maybe I'm just a philistine.
    • 1/5
      I also picked it up because I was intrigued by its title. But what is described are the most appalingly mundane and least remarkable things I have ever read. Maybe that's precisely the point. But, if so, without any conclusion or message, it is just a shallow exercise. Extremely slow and dull. I hated it.
    • 5/5
      What an unusual, and wonderful, book! This book is a tapestry of a day in the life of a neighborhood, a day seen from many perspectives, with the richness of humanity played out in numerous vignettes - a day rushing towards an indelible, unanticipated climax. The story centers around two of the young adults in the neighborhood, and weaves between the story of that day, and the story of the girl's life three years later. You don't need to diagram the neighborhood and keep a scorecard of the neighbors, although initially it seems inevitable. Before long they will all have their unique characteristics and backstories, and you won't have a problem telling who's who.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this. It took me a while to get used to the writing style, but about a third of the way through I was hooked. It was beautifully written and one that I would love to read again. I loved the way the book forced me to examine my own life and outlook, and I found reading this an almost cathartic experience. A very powerful book, yet simply written.
    • 5/5
      McGregor's justifiably acclaimed debut is a poetic and beautifully written dissection of student life in a northern English city.
    • 3/5
      The book is set in modern London and interweaves throughout the lives of residents in the street, working it's way back to a disaster that's alluded to at the beginning of the book. But it just doesn't work for me on so many fronts.For a start, there are far too many characters at play, many of whom never really take a proper place in the narrative, and it becomes very confusing as McGregor just refers to them by brief physical description and the number of house they live at. On a number of occasions I lost the trail and couldn't figure out who he was talking about, but it mattered little as they were of no consequence to the story. It was therefore very difficult to care much about any of these characters, on which premise the novel failed abjectly for me. McGregor also switched between first person and third person, moving between one main narrator in the current period to a third person observation of the past, and it just didn't work. With so many house numbers and characters to remember, the protagonist who becomes the first person narrator in part of the book is unremarkable and referred to little when observed through the third person voice, therefore the connection with the first person account is lost.The first person narrator is a young woman, but all through the novel I was conscious of a male writer trying to imagine what a woman thinks or how she acts. On this occasion the writer didn't manage to pull it off, and at times I had to keep reminding myself what sex the protagonist was.Finally, there was the metaphor and simile overload. Dear goodness, it was toe curling at times. 'If nobody speaks of remarkable things' - well, no need to on this occasion.
    • 4/5
      Interesting and well written book about an individual who is narrating her story over the past few months, and details of an incident which changed her life written from the perspective of the people who lived on one street during that one day. Difficult to put into words, but a good read all the same.
    • 3/5
      This book scores incredibly highly on the modern literature gimmickry checklist. Let's see now......Not a speech mark in the place...CHECKHardly any of the characters named....CHECKHanging paragraphs....hmmm that's innovative....CHECKSpeech reported warts and all so it takes three readings of each sentence to make out what is being said ...CHECKMost of the commas and a good few full-stops left out....CHECKOn that basis it should be a bestseller! The trouble is it's a tough read, made tougher by the fact that the event central to the 'story' is withheld until the very end, stretching the reader's capacity to care about the nameless characters and their formless angst.To give the author his due, he can write very good poetic prose, and dreams up some interesting scenarios. The trouble is, it's all a bit Turner Prize. As though someone painted a brilliant picture, but instead of just framing it and letting people enjoy it, he scribbled all over it so it was impossible to see what was originally there.
    • 4/5
      A lyrical dance through the characters inhabiting a suburban close. There is the perfect sketch of an old and loving couple, and troubled youth, and young love. The dance whirls round and round, picking up pace, repeating themes until the brilliant crescendo. Persevere, it's good - despite the strange punctuation.
    • 5/5
      One of my favourite books, completely loved it and I like the way it's been written. I've recommended it to a few people and they've struggled to get into it, but I didn't find that at all.
    • 5/5
      I finished this book today and sat quietly for a while reflecting on its beauty. It was the kind of book that touches you in a way that's hard to put into words. The 'event' was expected yet a surprise, and the last few pages had me on an emotional roller-coaster. I absolutely loved this book and its style, although a little strange to me at first, soon became a way of devouring the wonderful words even quicker! I can understand people not taking to it, and I wonder if I myself may have picked up the book at a different time in my life and dismissed it as being too quirky for me; I'm so glad I picked it up at the precise moment I did; I would have missed out on a true gem.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful book. It reads more like poetry than a novel at times. The opening description of a street in an English town is wonderful. Most characters aren't named, and are just referred to by where they live or by a distinguishing feature, which makes it a little difficult at first to grasp who is who, but it is so beautifully written and the sentiments in it so true, that this ceased to matter soon.
    • 4/5
      Poetic, carefully observed and well-constructed study of ordinary life. Progresses gently to an inevitable climax. Contemplative.
    • 5/5
      A story that watches neighbours on a street interacting and sometimes seeing actions that are evidence of extraordinary goings on. Intriguing suspense and some quirky characters add to a lyrical tale written with depth and insight. Given the Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and was on the Booker Prize longlist and the Waverton Good Read Award longlist.Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      A haunting read with depth and wisdom. Felt compelled more by the hopeful uncovering of the mystery than by the desire to read on, but satisfying and complete.
    • 5/5
      This is one of my best reads of the year. In some ways it remeinded me of Hitchcock's Rear Window, the way the narrative panned , like a camera, into the life of the street and the homes on the street. The style is different but not off-puttingly so. The lack of speech marks was not a distraction and made for a pacy read. Someone on this site thought it was slow - no way slow, sorry! The prose is superb and evocative. I couldn't put it down.
    • 5/5
      "... , if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?" Indeed - and what a remarkable book! Highly recommended reading.
    • 3/5
      not my usual kind of read but I found this suprisingly enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      A truly wonderful book which had me intrigued from beginning to end. One I always recommend when asked.
    • 4/5
      A peek into a working class neighborhood on the day a tragic event occurs. A rather strange story that keeps the reader a bit of an outsider looking in. Not my favorite book, but one that is so well written it is hard not to recommend it.
    • 1/5
      I didn't really take to this book at all. I suppose I'm opposed to the thesis. The mundane by definition can't be remarkable. In reality beauty is in our relationship to the mundane; our ability to see beyond it to a deeper meaning. The book keeps you waiting to reveal the nature of a terrible incident whilst relating the actions of characters living in one urban street. Yet surely why we do things is the great mystery; to investigate what we do is like exploring the workings of a toaster to find its soul. Many people really like this book, I guess I'm just not one of them.
    • 4/5
      This novel is a collection of successes and failures, from achievements both sentence by sentence and in a larger, conceptual sense, to shortcomings on similar levels. It requires an initial push and patience, and a tolerance for sometimes cheap-seeming suspense tactics, but the pay-off is good. In short, and without spoiling anything, the book begins (after it gets done with a several page description that isn't quite all it might be) by saying, "Oh, this extraordinary thing has happened," and we sense it's a terrible thing, and because it's extraordinary and because of its impact, yes, we absolutely want to know what it is. One can't (and can) quite imagine what on Earth could have happened. (And then, of course, one has a vague idea.) Beginning this way, however, seems to put too much pressure on that final Thing: the mystery business, which emerges elsewhere in the revelation and withholding of other crucial bits of information (in addition to the big one spanning the entire novel), is both a testament to the author's sustained control, but as well something that can get rather tiresome. It's almost as though Jon McGregor didn't trust us enough to read this novel through without something tugging us the whole way. Once you give up your frustrations, though, (why is he insisting on being so dubious?!) and allow yourself to concentrate more on the scenes that can be rather beautiful, the book falls into a kind of loveliness. There are wonderful lines and wonderful scenes both touching and frightening, and when the narrative settles down and delivers, it is almost always very satisfying and fresh.
    • 5/5
      I got this book for two reasons:1) I was intrigued by the title.2) It was nominated for the Booker, and I almost always like Booker picks.I read it over the last two days, and I loved it. But I think it's one of those love it or hate it books. I was sort of surprised at how much I loved it because it breaks my Number One Rule requiring standardized punctuation so I don't lose my freakin' mind. There were no (NO) quotation marks in the entire book. And it didn't make me crazy. Not once did I feel like putting the book down and writing a nastygram to the author. That's a big deal for me.So, let me tell you why I loved it. I know I overuse these words but I'm going to do it again. . .it was heartbreaking and beautiful. But not beautiful like any other novel I've read recently. Beautiful because it's much more like a 270 page poem than a novel. As a matter of fact, it reminded me of this quote from Ian McEwan's Saturday: Novels and movies, being restlessly modern, propel you forwards or backwards through time, through days, years or even generations. But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill like dry-stone walling or trout tickling.This one did have some plot, but it was much more about noticing things, seeing what we are normally in too much of a hurry to see. The title actually comes from this quote late in the book: He says this is a very big world and there are many many things you could miss if you are not careful. He says there are remarkable things all the time, right in front of us. . .and our lives are paler and poorer if we do not see them for what they are. He says, if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?Beautiful book. Just beautiful.
    • 4/5
      McGregor's prose is elegant and lyrical. I would award If Nobody Speaks . . . 5 stars except that I am a bit suspicious of the ending. This is a novel of mirror images and parallels: There are three sets of male twins as well as two pairs of damaged hands. The novel tracks back and forth among “snapshots” of the comings and goings, both external and internal, of various residents on one street of a neighborhood in an unnamed English city and a first person account three years later by one of the young women who was a resident on that same street on what turns out to have been a fateful day. Although the jump cuts back and forth are at first confusing (characters are identified by street addresses and by idiosyncrasies of dress, physique and behavior), they are rich with closely observed physical and emotional detail. Indeed, the act of observation is itself a character in the novel: residents look or lean out of their windows to observe the goings on of their neighbors; and finally, it is an act of observation that precipitates the "remarkable event" alluded to throughout the novel. As readers, we also become observers, examining these characters as if viewing them under a microscope or through a telescope, and yet, we either don’t or can’t see everything about them; mysteries persist, even after all has supposedly been revealed. Our vision, although more comprehensive than that of any of the characters, remains imperfect. Perhaps even the author doesn’t or can’t know the whole story. What we get are glimpses, snapshots as it were, that, like the boy in #18, we collect in a jumble, a kind of anthropological and/or archaeological trove of miscellany that seems to point to something significant, but the importance of which may depend solely on our having looked in a certain direction at a particular moment, on having paid attention. All of which is beautifully written by McGregor. My only quibble has to do with the inclusion of what could be interpreted as a supernatural event at the end of the novel. On the other hand, one could (as I am wont to do) read the ending as not a supernatural mystery, but rather a mystery of coincidence, of accident, one allowed for by probability. "And there is an interruption in the way of things, a pause, something faint like the quivering flutter of a moth’s rain-sodden wings, something unexpected. Something remarkable . . . . And as these streets are traveled, in the time it takes for a hand to be clasped and unclasped, Shahid Mohammad Nawaz wakes gently, lifted through a gap in the way of things." (272,274)Hmmm.