re:mote voices

Title: If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things
Author: Jon McGregor
Publisher: Bloomsbury

If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things follows two narrative strands, working back and forth between the first person "present" and a third person past. In the present of the novel, a girl talks us through her life and an event that has stopped her in her tracks. At this crux point she recalls a previous event, 3 years before she was a witness to a terrible event.

The novel starts with the hook and punch of the event, grabbing the reader in those first pages. Providing us with the reactions to something, without revealing what that something is. From the girl tries to deal with her situation, while recalling that one particular day. A day that edges forward in increments. Introducing us to the people that lived in this one street, and the minutiae of their lives.

While there are the two top-level stories, the day that is at the core of the story is comprised of a multitude of threads. A street full of people, with McGregor following them all, bringing them together to make the big picture - an illustration of how every mundane thing is actually a remarkable thing.

At times McGregor's writing comes across as having a reasonably traditional narrative structure. But when he hits his most intense he breaks the narrative down, using deliberate structural techniques. Which provide a certain flow, giving a definite emphasis to a writing that becomes lyrical. The density of the detail symphonic, so that there are passages of writing that we can seem to hear.

If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things is a textural novel, painting pictures of men who survived the second world war only to get terminal cancer, of little girls looking for angles, of unrequited love, of birth, death, hope and dreams. All to the soundtrack of life in a street in the north of England.

In technical terms perhaps it can be said that this is a novel in which nothing happens, given that the core is one day where something bad happens and the rest is padding. But it is a vivid padding which creates an environment. To a degree this is a novel about life, about all the little details that often go unnoticed. Though it is also a mystery novel, not in a traditional sense, McGregor works in clues - as you keep track of all the people in this street, in each of the houses, you can narrow down the range of what "the event" is going to be. He plays with this, so there are these false moments and red herrings where you think that maybe you are about to get your revelation, but don't.

Regardless, for me at least, the end isn't entirely surprising, but with a novel like this that isn't entirely the point. Given the size of the cast and the way that McGregor writes them all into this tangled wave, I would make comparisons to Nick Walker's BlackBox, both writers demonstrating a certain level of sheer skill. Though they are both quite different works.