I finished this book today and sat quietly for a while reflecting on its beauty. It was the kind of book that touches you in a way that's hard to put into words. The 'event' was expected yet a surprise, and the last few pages had me on an emotional roller-coaster. I absolutely loved this book and its style, although a little strange to me at first, soon became a way of devouring the wonderful words even quicker! I can understand people not taking to it, and I wonder if I myself may have picked up the book at a different time in my life and dismissed it as being too quirky for me; I'm so glad I picked it up at the precise moment I did; I would have missed out on a true gem. ( )

I was persuaded to read this book by two friends as we all wanted to discover the nature of the ‘terrible event’ alluded to on the back cover. However, I don’t feel I drew the short straw in having to do the actual reading - it was a breathless delight I would have hated to miss.

It’s a little difficult to tell you what the book is ‘about’ as few of the characters are named. Basically, there are two narrative strands. The first is tied to one street of a city on a hot, summer’s day. There’s an injured man caring for his daughter. Students are returning from a party. A young man reaches for eye-drops. A family gets breakfast. The characters are identified as ‘the man from number twenty-two’ and, at first, it was hard to remember who was who. I soon realised that who lived in what house wasn’t really important though and found my way through the text by virtue of each character’s unique identifier – age, moustache, illness.

The second strand visits one of the street’s residents at a point in the future. She has moved away. She’s lost touch with friends. She’s lost. And it’s really impossible to say more without spoiling your reading – and I do heartily recommend that you read this book for yourself.

Mr McGregor’s writing is beautiful and reminded me of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient in tone and pacing. I seemed to float from one scene to the next, from one narrative to the next as he drew me inexorably onwards to that terrible conclusion. There is a ‘terrible event’. But you will have to find out about it for yourself. ( )

A book I discovered through bookcrossing and went on to buy my own copy since I know I will read this again some day.

Everyone in this book is linked by one central event - and we don't know what it is until the end of the book.

What can I say about it? It's beautiful and poetic - even the way the text is displayed upon the page is beautiful. It isn't a book I wanted to rush - it took me a while to read it, I wanted to stop and think and savour almost every page!

'..if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?' ( )

As a book, it doesn't really hold together, and viewed on that level I found this entirely unsatisfying. The story wove in and out of past, present, characters, and moments adeptly - but always in a way that left the whole, for me, entirely disconnected.

But every so often, amidst all the not-quite-there or trying-too-hard lyricism, a phrase or a paragraph or a sentence or two just shone. ( )

Lovely poetic book mixing together the minutiae of the daily lives of the residents of a specific street on a specific day and the current life of one of the people that lived on that street. Some of it is a bit rambling, but in the main it's beautifully written. ( )