“I don’t understand why it seems so fresh in my mind, even now, three years later and a few hundred miles away.
I think about it, and I can’t even remember people’s names.”
This was a very different book. I haven’t decided whether it was different good, or just different. I’m leaning towards just different.
The book had an almost overwhelming number of characters, yet not one of these were named. Alright, one of them was named, but not until the very end of the book. The entire book also took place over one day. It was narrated by someone in the “present” and occasionally the narrative would relate details of her present day life, but it was mostly set on that one day, on that one street.
McGregor’s writing style is very unique, and I did enjoy that more than I had initailly expected. The first time I picked up this book, I was turned off my the poetry-like prose that he utilizes, but I actually quite liked it. The narrative flowed really well, and while there are a huge number of characters (none with names for the vast majority of the book) there was never any confusion. The characters are all developed to such a degree that they have distinct personalities. They are extremely different from each other and telling them apart is no big issue.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that I really did enjoy this book.
And there is an interruption in the way of things, a pause, something faint like the quivering flutter of a moth’s rain-sodden wings, something unexpected. Something remarkable.
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
…if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
…they watch the children getting wet in the middle of it all, the children drenched already, soaked through with excitement, waving their tongues in the air to catch it…
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
And there’s a smell in the air, swelling and rolling, a smell like metal scraped clean of rust, a hard cleanness, the air tight with it, sprung, an electric tingle winding from the ground to the sky, a smell that unfurls in the back of the mouth, dense, clammy, a smell without a name but easy to recognise and everyone is smelling the air and looking upwards, saying or thinking it smells like rain.
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
A shadow passes across the street, a faint imprint rolling briefly across the pavement and the tarmac…
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
It made me feel primitive, rooted, connected to the dirt of the earth and the light of the stars, a spun thread pulled across the span of generations
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
I open the window to get some air into the room, and a burst of noise rushes in.
Traffic, and shouting, and music.
And birdsong, from somewhere up on the roof, a thin twitter that creeps and tangles in with all the other sounds.
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
And it kept on raining, rattling endlessly into the ground, piling up into the streets, wedged into the gutters and the drains.
It made the street look squalid and greasy.
— If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
