(On the cover of the
book there are no capital letters. I thought I’d honour McGregor’s choice.)
I refer you all to the first paragraph of my review of Life After Life, in which I ramble on about those books that are so fabulous
and thoroughly amazing that you want everybody ever in the world to read them.
And yes, this is another one of those books. if nobody speaks of remarkable things is truly on of the best books
I have ever read, and certainly the best book I have read in the last year. Or
perhaps two years. Since whenever it was I read Ishigruo’s Remains of the Day.
I have no words to explain
the sheer brilliance of this book, but I can and will rant about how much I
liked it. if nobody speaks of remarkable things is a novel about the ordinary
and the extraordinary. The books centres on one single street over one single
day, in which normality is shattered by an awful event. Simultaneously we get
the story of one of the street’s residents, looking back on that day from a few
years on. It is a portrait of the normal existence of one street, and of the
effects of tragedy, but it is also so much more. It is also a novel about
death, family, friendship, love, life. I’m amazed at how this book encompasses so
many snapshots of different bits of life in one single novel.
That McGregor manages
to create such strong and moving characters by naming so few is incredible. Somehow
the young man from number eighteen, the elderly couple from number twenty, the
man with the scared hands, the twin boys, the girl with the short blonde hair
and the little square glasses – all of these people come to life in details, in
their actions, their movements, without ever being given the solid identifier
of a name. And yet we recognise all the residents of the street as they appear
again and again, moving in and out of view for the reader. It’s an incredible
achievement.
