Jon McGregor had my full attention from the opening sentence….”Eleanor was in the kitchen when he got back from her mother’s funeral”.....The obvious question is why did Eleanor not attend? you are caught in the author’s trap you want to know the answer and so you start reading…...The seemingly ordinary story of the life of Robert Carter and his wife Eleanor Campbell and the fallout that happens when an offhand comment shatters irrevocably those values previously held to be true.

Told in a similar writing style to William Boyd and set over a time period of some 50 years it is the language of McGregor that adds so much and enriches the reading experience……”so he might have been rushing to catch his train and not turned and seen her there. These things, the way they fall into place. The people we would be if these things were otherwise”.......”the house empty behind them, unspoken regrets and recriminations swept out of sight like crumbs from the table, silence blanketing the room, the two of them avoiding eachother’s eyes”.......”Every step drew her deeper into the hollows of the landscape, the green hills and shining rivers and mist-tangled treetops, as though she was clambering into the postcard she used to keep propped up on the mantelpiece”...... The author addresses and opens up to examination Carter’s work as Curator of a Coventry museum, his relationship with Eleanor and how this relationship is tested over a chance remark. The reader is able to identify and immerse himself in the story as it unfolds. Jon McGregor’s real ability is the astounding way he brings to life the ordinary and mundane in colourful descriptive heartfelt prose. Wonderful writing, brilliant author, highly highly recommended….”David joked to Eleanor one worn-out evening, and they were happy, in the ordinary ways which had evaded them for so long”....... ( )

Won this book thru Goodreads, and I am very glad I did. The story is a quiet recounting of a marriage, of a childhood, of a secret. The surprise is the writing. This book came out in 2006, and the author won prizes for an earlier novel, so how come this book is just getting my attention now in 2011? The writing in this book is superb. It is subtle yet powerful, truly impressive. There is a chapter where Aunt Julia describes meeting her husband at a dance during the war and the chapter reads as a piece of music, the room spins as the dancers move and the story takes on the pace of the music, as does the relationship. I had to reread it to marvel at the author's skill. I am looking forward to reading more from McGregor. ( )

Thanks to Goodreads friend Laura K., I was able to read this book now. She sent me a copy for my own when I found out that I couldn’t borrow this book from the library, and so we were able to do a buddy read, and I love doing buddy reads with her.

This is a perfect book for a buddy or group or book club read. It’s a great discussion book.

Laura and I read mostly in sync and it was a great experience, and it also helped me read it, though the book was so good I doubt I’d have had any problems reading through it, and I enjoyed reading slowly and savoring it.

Beautifully written and masterfully told the way events and relationships unfolded. There is a wonderful use of chapter titles and use of objects. I appreciated the mostly very short chapters.

My emotions really came out. Much in the book is heartbreakingly sad but I felt a gamut of emotions.

I think this book can be enjoyed by most readers, but it might be of particular interest for those readers on all sides of adoptions: people who’ve been adopted, adoptive parents, birth parents, siblings and all family members who’ve experienced the impact of adoption, especially the closed adoptions that were way too common in the past. Also recommended for those who’ve experienced (personally or in their families) mental health issues and life challenges. This is a great family story and so much over so much time is told in relatively few pages with relatively few words.

The ending/resolution is brilliant, so smart that for me it was breathtaking, and so true to real life; the entire story was. I loved it!

I looked up Fanad and other places in Ireland, places in Scotland, places in England. I wanted to know more and more as I read, not just about the characters and their stories but also about the times and places in which they lived.

Superb book! This is my first book by this author. I want to read his other three already published novels and also maybe his book of short stories, and I hope that he continues to write more books. He has a way of making something special out of the most mundane things in life. ( )

I won this book in a giveaway. The introduction was enticing but the beginning started a little dry for me however once I got into the story it was good till the end. ( )

bookshelves: published-2006, one-penny-wonder, hardback, autumn-2013, paper-read, lit-richer, coventry, wwii, britain-england, aberdeenshire, britain-ireland, britain-scotland, slit-yer-wrists-gloomy, mental-health, plague-disease, bullies, families
Read from September 04 to November 19, 2013

Dedication: To Alice

Opening: They came in the morning, early, walking with the others along tracks and lanes and roads, across fields, down the long low hills which led to the slow pull of the river, down to the open gateways in the city walls, the hours and days of walking showing in the slow shift of their bodies, their breath streaming above them in the cold morning air as the night fell away at their backs.

It is plain that I need to read a third by this author as it seems preposterous that the same author can deliver a 4* of utter brilliance and a 1* of shudder...

McGregor brings some startling human misery to nigh on every character in this book: recreational domestic violence, Alzheimers, abandoned child, bomb sites and madness, all deftly managed and couched in emphatic and competent language. But where has the magical prose that enthralled us in Remarkable Things?

'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' - Leo Tolstoy

4* If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
1* Even The Dogs
3* So Many Ways To Begin ( )