If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK AWARD
WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
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.
Reviews
‘My book of the year. A magical, spellbinding, profound novel’ Maggie O’Farrell, Daily Telegraph
‘A sensationally accomplished debut … a convincing and moving vision of contemporary Britain’ Sunday Times
‘This is a novel of wonders’ Observer
‘This novel owes as much to poetry as it does to prose in its hypnotic portrait of industrialised society … An assured debut’ The Times
‘This is an ordinary world, shabby and melancholy, but McGregor describes it with mesmeric power … you won’t read anything much more poignant than this’ Daily Telegraph
‘This is ecstatic writing, suffused with delight both at the things evoked and at the language that can recreate them … McGregor’s conviction will carry them a long way’ TLS
‘A dream of a novel … It is not every novelist who has the gift, as Jon McGregor does, of reminding his readers of that heaven in a wild flower, that infinity in a grain of sand’ The Times
‘McGregor's publishers must be openly rejoicing …If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is the work of a burning new talent’ Daily Mail
‘McGregor is an exemplary archivist of the humdrum … written by someone who detects so passionately the remarkable in the everyday’ Spectator
‘Extraordinary … McGregor’s triumphant prose-poem of ordinariness has a very contemporary kind of spirituality about it’ Sunday Times
‘Wonderful … Full of gentle wonder and blinding insight … He has annotated the miracle of life’ Glasgow Herald
About the author
Jon McGregor is the author of four novels and a story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award, and has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 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.
Twitter: @jon_mcgregor
Website: www.jonmcgregor.com
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McGregor's poignant, Booker-nominated debut examines in loving detail a day in the lives of the inhabitants of a single British block. It is a day like any other a woman prepares breakfast for her family, boys play cricket, a man washes his car until a terrible accident occurs, which is witnessed by all the neighbors but concealed from readers until the novel's end. Drifting from apartment to house to yard, McGregor reveals the stories found in each: there is the couple who fight bitterly and have brilliant sex; the man with hands scarred from trying, unsuccessfully, to save his wife from a fire; the aging veteran keeping from his wife the truth of his imminent demise. Weaving through these tales of the transcendental ordinary is the first-person narrative of a girl coming to terms with her unexpected pregnancy after a one-night stand. Her lover's twin brother arrives to drive her to her parents, but doesn't tell her the truth about his brother's absence; the girl's mother has her own secrets. McGregor's rapt attention to the exquisiteness of daily life sometimes makes his details ring falsely portentous, and his unwavering focus on minutiae rain, traffic lights can be wearying. But as the man with the scarred hands remarks, "there are many things you could miss if you are not paying careful attention. There are remarkable things all the time." This is the guiding principle of McGregor's novel, one that requires patience but yields ample rewards.
