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If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

By Jon McGregor

(23)

| Audio Cassette | 9781841979328

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Book Description

Risky in conception, hip and yet soulful, this is a prose poem of a novel -- intense, lyrical, and highly evocative -- with a mystery at its center, which keeps the reader in suspense until the final page. In a tour de force that could be described as Altmanesque, we are invited into the private livContinue

Critics

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things By Jon McGregor

It's a terrible day in the neighborhoodJon McGregor's first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, focuses on one block in a city street and one horrible event of the recent past, the details of which are concealed until the end of the book. M ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Tue, 14 Sep 2010

5 Reviews

2 people find this helpful

It's been a while since I read this, but I remember being blown away. Good candidate for a re-read soon...

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annemarie said on Sep 22, 2006 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Excessively poetic.
The decision to reveal the "big incident" at the end of the book is counter-productive: at that point I had already figured out what was going to happen - and was actually expecting something more (an alien abduction, maybe?).
It would have benefited from better characterization, ... (continue)

Excessively poetic.
The decision to reveal the "big incident" at the end of the book is counter-productive: at that point I had already figured out what was going to happen - and was actually expecting something more (an alien abduction, maybe?).
It would have benefited from better characterization, and a bit more plot.

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Ficie said on May 26, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

A Natural Progression of Stream of Consciousness

Jon McGregor has created a work which is Joyceian in style. Rather than focusing on one person in one day, like Ulysses, this is the tale of one event and several people. This brings a much more developed description of life, as it pinpoints every day minutiae of living, whereas Ulysses works on the ... (continue)

Jon McGregor has created a work which is Joyceian in style. Rather than focusing on one person in one day, like Ulysses, this is the tale of one event and several people. This brings a much more developed description of life, as it pinpoints every day minutiae of living, whereas Ulysses works on the big picture to describe the details.
The speech has no punctuation, which leaves the reader out of the action, and becomes merely an observer to the tale. The words are not spoken, but related as a statement of events, like a character witness. The lack of full stops in the rain brings a sense of urgency and pace to the flow of the book, whereas elsewhere it feels sluggish enough to notice everything as a repetitive constant.
The decision to follow the life of one person three years in the future allows the stream of consciousness to be fully explored in first and third person narratives, and they complement each other wonderfully. It also allows for a subtle implication of the inextricable link between twins, of which there are 3 pairs in the novel, and numerous other 'couples', such as the 2 girls with blonde hair and glasses; the teenagers locked in each others arms and the elderly couple. They are described more like single beings than individuals, and it helps to highlight the frustrating loneliness of the solitary characters, such as those of the man with scarred hands, his daughter, and the main character's father.
As a perspective on life from a 3rd party viewpoint, it is brilliant prose worthy of the style; and as a case study on living in it, it stands as an explanation that answers are rarely available.

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Daniel Peachey said on Jul 2, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

a 'visual' book, the prose is not narrative, it's like watching the scene yourself, you can imagine the camera moving in and out the houses on the street. Loved it.

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floriana said on Jan 28, 2010 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback