So Many Ways to Begin
A Novel by Jon McGregor
0-7475-8413-3
CDN $24.95 paper
0-7475-7946-6
CDN $32.95 cloth
Bloomsbury UK
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
A Novel by Jon McGregor
0-7475-6157-5
CDN $16.95 paper
Bloomsbury UK
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So Many Ways to Begin
Against the backdrop of post-WWII Britain, Jon McGregor’s lyrical, intimate novel explores what happens when our lives
fail to take the turns we expect, and the ways we learn to let go of the people we might have been.
David Carter cannot help but wish for more: that his wife would still be the ambitious and sparkling Scottish girl he once found so irresistible;
that his job as the curator of the local museum could live up to the promise it once held; that his daughter’s arrival could have brought her
parents closer.
But a few careless words spoken by his mother’s friend have left David with the knowledge that his whole life has been constructed around an
untruth. And so he begins to catalogue his joys and disappointments, the migrations and arrivals, hoping to find the same excitement in the
artifacts of his own life—hoping that someday there will be someone to show them to. Because long ago, a young Irish girl arrived in war-time
London an innocent and left carrying a shame. There are so many ways to begin, and to live; there are so many ways to love, and not to love, and
to begin again.
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
On a street in a town in the north of England, ordinary people are going about their everyday lives—a young man is in love
with a neighbour who does not even know his name, an old couple are on their way to a bus stop. Then the unexpected happens, a terrible event that
shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. To those who live on the street and see the event, it is horrific and remarkable. Yet, it isn’t
even covered by the local news, though it will change forever the lives of those who witnessed it. An astonishing debut novel that is breathtakingly
original, humane and moving.
With vividly detailed and poetic prose, McGregor captures the lives of these residents: their small triumphs and tragedies, their joys and heartbreaks
and the secrets that they keep. He engages in an archaeology of the present, unearthing the things that we miss’the remarkable right in front of
us’and transforms the mundane into the magnificent. The subtle yet powerful writing draws readers into both the characters’ and the
author’s secrets. It propels the reader to an unexpected and satisfying conclusion.
About Jon McGregor
Jon McGregor’s first novel brilliantly evokes the histories and lives of average people, building an unforgettable human panorama.
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things won the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset
Maugham Award and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. So Many Ways to Begin
is his second novel. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
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