If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things
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In this Booker Prize-nominated "dream of a novel," ordinary middle-class lives converge and collide one summer day in England (The Times).
In delicate, intricately observed close-up, this novel makes us privy to the private lives of residents of a quiet street over the course of a single day.
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things explores the hopes, fears, and unspoken despairs of a diverse community: a single father with painfully scarred hands; a group of young club-goers just home from an all-night rave, sweetly high and mulling over vague dreams; and the nervous young man at number 18 who collects weird urban junk and is haunted by the specter of unrequited love. What eventually unites them is an utterly surprising and terrible twist of fate that shatters their everyday, ordinary tranquility, and all that they take for granted.
A prose poem of a novel with a mystery at its center that "recalls To The Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway" (The Times), If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things was the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award and the Betty Trask Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times. It is, in the words of Ali Smith, "a tremendous read."
"A wonderful evocation of the beauty and horror of the literally everyday." -- Booklist, starred review
"Absolutely resplendent . . . does for urban England what John Cheever did for Westchester County." -- Bookpage
About this Author
Jon McGregor published his first novel in Britain in 2002 to critical acclaim, and was inspired in part by the phenomenal media attention that surrounded the death of Princess Diana. He has written numerous short stories leading, in part, to the development of some of his novels. He founded the Nottingham Writer's Studio in 2006 and also taught a course at Arvon. McGregor lives in Nottingham, England.
Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2003-11-04
Reviews
"[McGregor's] sharp eye and broad sympathies show a true novelistic sensibility and a sizable talent." Kirkus Reviews
"A wonderful evocation of the beauty and horror of the literally everyday." Booklist, ALA, Starred Review
"Absolutely resplendent, the work of a true seer who does for urban England what John Cheever did for Westchester County." Bookpage
"Poignant." Publishers Weekly
"This is fast fiction, as fast as the mind works . . . it's what James Joyce and Virginia Woolf worked to achieve." Los Angeles Times
"What James Joyce and Virginia Woolf worked to achieve." -- A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2003
Los Angeles Times
"Nameless though they may be, McGregor's characters become momentarily vivid through his keen sense of detail and lyrical writing style." The San Francisco Chronicle --
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