If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

by JonMcGregor (Author)

Synopsis

'But mostly there was this moment of absolute silence. Absolute stillness. It couldn't actually have been like that of course, there must still have been music playing, and traffic passing along the main road, but the way I remember it is with this one weighted pause, the whole street frozen in a tableau of gaping mouths.' On a street in a unnamed town in the North of England, perfectly ordinary people are doing totally ordinary things - street cricket, barbecues, painting windows...But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening and no one who witnesses it will be quite the same again. 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 a remarkable debut.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 05 Aug 2002

ISBN 10: 0747558337
ISBN 13: 9780747558330
Book Overview: Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002 If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is a dream of a novel. Erica Wagner, The Times Beautiful, very strange, moving and exhilarating - for all fans of Ian McEwan, Graham Swift and Tim Pears
Prizes: Winner of Betty Trask Award 2003. Shortlisted for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2003.

Media Reviews
A debut novel for the literary market, its outstanding feature is the edgy, kaleidoscopic style of describing an ordinary street with ordinary inhabitants whose lives are affected by witnessing something that goes terribly wrong in their road. The breathless conversations (without punctuation) and the minutiae of street life are etched into the consciousness with an observer's precision, as if such a style had been encouraged on a creative writing course. McGregor gradually freeze-frames the complexities and personal dilemmas behind the facades of ordinariness even as he postpones the revelation of the actual event. An unusual and noteworthy arrival that will attract some favour yet might also annoy for its contrivance.
Author Bio
Jon McGregor is twenty-five and lives in Nottingham.