If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is author Jon McGregor

Jon mcgregor

Jon McGregor is a British author who has written three novels; If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, which was nominated for the 2002 Booker Prize, winner of the Betty Trask Prize and winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 2003, and So Many Ways to Begin, which was published in 2006 and also...

's first novel, first published by Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Publishing plc is an independent, London-based publishing house known for literary novels. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. The company's growth over the past decade is primarily attributable to the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. Bloomsbury was named Publisher of...

 in 2002. It portrays a day in the life of a suburban British street, with the plot alternately following the lives of the street's various inhabitants. All but one person's viewpoint is described in the third person, and the narrative uses a flowing grammatical style which mimics their thought processes. It was nominated for the Booker Prize, and the author shortlisted for the 2003 Times

Times

The Times is a UK daily newspaper, the original English language newspaper titled "Times". Times may also refer to:In newspapers:*The Times , went defunct in 2005*The Times *The Times of Northwest Indiana...

 Young Writer Award. The book also won the Betty Trask Award

Betty Trask Award

The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35, who reside in a current or former Commonwealth nation. The awards were established in 1984 by the Society of Authors, at the bequest of the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels...

 and the Somerset Maugham Award.

Plot summary

The novel never shares with the reader that the day continually referenced by the girl narrator is the day on which Princess Diana dies. There are three artistic characters: the boy from #18 who takes photos of people on the street (he doesn't know their names and they are unaware that he's taking their photos), the young boy artist from #11 and the older man from #20 who is ill and was a grave-digger in the military. Names are a recurrent theme throughout the novel but we are told very few. The old man gives a name to all the deceased while he is digging their graves. The boy from #18 gives names to all the dead babies, the narrator girl who becomes pregnant is searching for a name for her baby because it is so important to give it a name, the man with the thinning hair and perfect moustache is upset when people mispronounce his name, and then in the end we finally find out the name of the child who has been hit by the car — his name is repeated until he starts breathing again.

Awards and nominations

• Nominated for the 2002 Booker Prize
• Awarded the Somerset Maugham Award in 2003