June 14, 2006

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

I just finished If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor. It was a jumping off from The Hours, due to its moment by moment pacing. Stuart bought this book for me in 2003, so goes his message on the inside cover. And I believe I must have read it that April, as there was a bookmark from Paris inside and that was when we were there. I wanted to read it back then, because McGregor lived in Nottingham and it was quite hyped in the city. I liked it, but not as much as I had wanted to. I am a bit disappointed now, because things have been so busy this week, I’ve not had the time to devote this book that I wanted to give it. I think it would be best read in a sitting, because the connectivity in its rich fabric is best understood that way. It is a beautiful book in so many ways, but it has its own problems. McGregor is trying to do too many things, I think, and the result is a bit overwhelming and disquieting. There are about three hundred stories meshed here, which is part of McGregor’s whole point, but the result is less a novel than a sweep of grandiose proportions. Some of the situations were a bit implausible. But the sweep is worth it, and this is so clearly a first novel by somebody whose future novels are going to be even better. There is an amazing image of a man who bungee jumps and as he falls he sees a child hit by a car, and as he bounces back up and down, and hangs, he has to watch this, absolutely powerless but to witness. This book reminded me of Woolf’s “Modern Fiction”, and that McGregor is trying to do something altogether new here, and we have to credit him, problems and all.