If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

(Paperback)

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WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK AWARD
WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence street cricket, barbecues, painting windows A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever.

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 an astonishing debut.

Reviews

My book of the year. A magical, spellbinding, profound novel Maggie OFarrell, Daily Telegraph

A sensationally accomplished debut a convincing and moving vision of contemporary Britain Sunday Times

This is a novel of wonders Observer

This novel owes as much to poetry as it does to prose in its hypnotic portrait of industrialised society An assured debut The Times

This is an ordinary world, shabby and melancholy, but McGregor describes it with mesmeric power you wont read anything much more poignant than this Daily Telegraph

This is ecstatic writing, suffused with delight both at the things evoked and at the language that can recreate them McGregors conviction will carry them a long way TLS

A dream of a novel It is not every novelist who has the gift, as Jon McGregor does, of reminding his readers of that heaven in a wild flower, that infinity in a grain of sand The Times

McGregor's publishers must be openly rejoicing If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is the work of a burning new talent Daily Mail

McGregor is an exemplary archivist of the humdrum written by someone who detects so passionately the remarkable in the everyday Spectator

Extraordinary McGregors triumphant prose-poem of ordinariness has a very contemporary kind of spirituality about it Sunday Times

Wonderful Full of gentle wonder and blinding insight He has annotated the miracle of life Glasgow Herald

Author Bio

Jon McGregor is the author of four novels and a story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award, and has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters. He was born in Bermuda in 1976, grew up in Norfolk, and now lives in Nottingham.