If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

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Something swept through me, swept out of and over me, something unstoppable, like water surging from a broken tap and flooding across the kitchen floor. I need to justify that," he says. "Last week I was just someone who had had a first novel published." We watch and observe the people living their separate lives. Ordinary neighbors on a street. Then something happens. Look at the title. One may ask what is so remarkable about these people and their lives. My response would be that it is in the ordinary that the remarkable is to be found. I like this message. To play with time as he does - events don’t occur in a linear way - and to refuse to give most of the characters names, are very bold steps for a young novelist. But he was clearly in a brave mood: he told us that he wanted to write a plot-less story, to prove that a novel can work in a deeper way.

Jon McGregor’s novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things follows the novel-in-a-day format and takes the reader through the day of a regular neighborhood in England. In Caroline Edwards’ “An Interview with Jon McGregor”, McGregor himself states that the neighborhood is based heavily on observations of small details or events, saying “This sense of observing…the idea of lives pivoting on single moments and lives being changed by passing remarks and stray comments and accidents and coincidences” (Edwards 220-221). While I agree with McGregor’s statement that lives can change in an instant because of a seemingly small detail, the more authentic connections that McGregor is making exist between the events of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable …show more content… In this Booker Prize–nominated “dream of a novel,” ordinary middle-class lives converge and collide one summer day in England ( The Times ).This book, to me, was a whole lot of nothing. But, maybe I just don't "get" contemporary literature! I read this novel as a follow-up to Jon McGregor’s superb Reservoir 13, which was my standout contemporary read of 2017. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (henceforth INSoRT) was McGregor’s first novel, published in 2002, when he was twenty-six years old and a complete unknown. It put him straight on the literary map when it was longlisted for the Booker Prize, as an out-of-left-field choice. Jon McGregor παρουσιάζει σαν μια κινηματογραφική εμπειρία σε χαρτί. Ο φακός της κάμερας μετακινείται συνεχώς από διαμέρισμα σε διαμέρισμα, εστιάζει σε συγκεκριμένες κινήσεις και πολλές φορές νιώθεις ότι το βίντεο είναι σε αργή κίνηση. Ο φακός συνεχίζει να εστιάζει μέχρι που η εικόνα παγώνει εντελώς. Διαβάζεις προτάσεις, παραγράφους, σελίδες και ο χρόνος παραμένει παγωμένος ενώ εσύ βιώνεις παρατεταμένα την ίδια στιγμή -πλέον αιωνιότητα- από πολλά σημεία. Δεν υπάρχει παρελθόν ούτε μέλλον. Μόνο ένα αιώνιο παρόν το οποίο όποτε θελήσει ο συγγραφέας θα επαναφέρει στην κανονική ροή του χρόνου. There are echoes of Dylan Thomas in the opening chapter, the auditory anatomy of a northern city at night; traffic, air conditioners, roadsweepers, lorries reversing, 'sung sirens, sliding through the streets, streaking blue light from distress to distress', 'the rippled roll of shutters'.

Her news, that of discovering she is pregnant by a casual encounter, misses any sense of either fear or elation. Instead it becomes a reason to examine the nature of the girl's relationship with her mother and of the character of the mother herself. McGregor's only personal experience of death was witnessing his own grandfather dying in a hospice a few years ago. "I felt very privileged and somehow it was very helpful for us all to be there. I found it very interesting."

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things explores the hopes, fears, and unspoken despairs of a diverse 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. When I told her about my latest new job she said that sounds very nice and what other opportunities have you been looking at? And then around teatime, from nowhere, I smashed all the dirty plates and mugs into the washing-up bowl. And ineffectual prose emerges as the self-defining mediatrix between reality and the inexplicable mysteries of bare existence. To be fair, I've never much cared for this particular style of writing. The present tense prose is a little too sparse for my taste. The narrative structure, a little too self-conscious. There's a deliberately generic quality to the setting and characters. I suppose this was done to emphasize the basic human condition. But, how can you love your characters if you don't even name them?

I reflect upon the invisible miracles that must have slipped through my fingers or been missed by my unobservant glance under the false pretence of narcotized routine and marvel at Mcgregor’s prowess in bringing this subject matter to attention with perplexing intonation and mould breaking narrative. I don’t think this novel is as good as those books (that are related to each other), but still I think this is an impressive effort by the author. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things was longlisted for the Booker Prize, [4] and in 2003 won both the Betty Trask Award [5] and the Somerset Maugham Award. [6] Reception [ edit ] Then the awe of the knitting needles twirling in blurred images, somehow holding it all together and with infinite care delicately purls the minute threading into its barely seen connecting pattern and a harsh gasp at the end.McGregor’s writing style is poetic; beautifully and meticulously structured. The story of a single day slowly unfolds through a series of little vignettes that slowly connect together, like projections on gauze. The narrative develops like a series of Polaroid snapshots, each slowly becoming clear to the reader, as you piece together the events of a seemingly unremarkable day. The multiple narration where the same event is seen through the filter of different eyes creates a series of repeating echoes with a cinematic sweep of motifs and images.