If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was McGregor's first book. It was nominated for the Booker prize. The story begins on a quiet urban street in England where a community of neighbors have just witnessed a horrible accident. Without revealing any details, McGregor leaves the scene abruptly and continues his story in a split narrative. With vivid detail he describes the events leading up to the accident, taking his readers behind closed doors into the private lives of the residents who occupy each house. The second narrative follows the story of one of these residents three years later as she still struggles to come to terms with the horror of what she saw that day. A chance meeting introduces her to the twin brother of one of the neighbors also present at the accident and it is through this relationship and a strange twist of events that she is able to find some closure.



McGregor immediately draws his readers in with his poetic writing style and well-drawn characters. The pacing of the story is slow, however, it is still a page-turner in the sense that the details of the accident remain a mystery until the very end. The two narratives alternate chapters and are related from different points of view. Sentences are long and densely written but chapters are short. The author goes into great detail describing the mundane activities each individual participates in, but despite this readers will find themselves enticed by the many diverse characters and how so many people with so little in common will remain forever connected through this one traumatic experience.



The only character with a name in the book is the twin brother, Michael. Everyone else is identified by their physical traits and house number. Although this can get confusing at times, it does help to create a realistic atmosphere given that neighbors often related to each other by location, appearance, as opposed to name. Although the two narratives come together nicely at the end, McGregor still leaves a lot of room for thought and discussion. Strong language is used and the novel does require a lot of focus and patience from the reader but the rewards are well worth it.



Quote: "Even the traffic scattered through these streets: the taxis and the cleaners, the shift-workers and the delivery drivers, even they are held still in this moment, trapped by traffic lights which synchronise red as the system cycles from old day to new, hundreds of feet resting on accelerators, hundreds of pairs of eyes hanging on the lights, all waiting for the amber, all waiting for the green. The whole city has stopped. And this is a pause worth savouring, because the world will soon be complicated again." p. 5


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