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I read this some time ago and would be interested to know what others thought about it. I thought it was blown up out of all proportion and my expectations were high, leaving me a little disappointed with it if i'm honest.

I loved it.  I didn't really have any expectations about it before I read it though.

I thought the first chapter, the description of the city was beautiful - almost like poetry.  I did find it a little bit hard at first to grasp who all of the characters were since so few names are used in the whole book, but after a few chapters it didn't matter so much.

I found it very moving in places - at the end, but also the description of the relationship between the old man who is ill and his wife..

I enjoyed it so much in fact I've got "So Many Ways to Begin" to read soon.

I'm about half way through it at the moment.  Was hoping to have it finished for tonight. 

So far I am actually enjoying it, which surprised me.  I didn't have any expectations of it beforehand as I had read the reviews of it and it has been described as a bit of a marmite book.    The first chapter, although beautifully written wasn't my cup of tea to be honest, and I was thinking that I wouldn't enjoy the book.  But I am hooked...so far so good.   Not sure what the ending will be like, but I am intrigued.   I am really enjoying the different characters especially the story of the sick old man and his wife.   I am also enjoying the story of the main character so far. 

I agree with justine completely.  It's some time since I read the book, but it has really stayed with me.  I absolutely loved the poetry of the language and the fact that it's all slightly dreamlike as you piece together the people and events.  To me the whole book was like an extended prose poem about life and the value of all those tiny details of daily life that we so often just don't see, that can be incredibly beautiful if we really look at them.  I also really liked the way McGregor shows how different people have different perspectives on life, depending on their own experiences and circumstances, just as all the "witnesses" to the accident have a slightly different view of exactly what happened.  I thought it was very clever how he built up fragments of these different perspectives bit by bit to create the full picture of this one tiny moment in time.

I seem to have formed a bizarre pattern of hating my own choices!

I just couldn't stand this - though I have to confess that I didn't finish it. I flicked to the end but I could see from the format that it wasn't going to get any better. (Correct me if I'm wrong!) 

My problems were firstly that there was so much description and - well, nothing else. I felt like he was aiming to be poetic and poignant but I felt that it read like a list of staged and dull observations, that lead to very little. I read a whole scene - the one where the girl was on the phone to her old friend - thinking that the narrator was male, only to discover at the end of the scene that it was female. I'm not a fan of different narrators, but this was infuriating. I think having multiple narrators over time was too ambitious - as a reader I never knew who was talking, and when I don't know what they were talking about, it left me feeling alienated. This is my major criticism really: there was no one character or setting to get your teeth into as the story kept flitting away, so I felt like I had no reason to carry on reading - there seemed to be no point in it. "The woman at number seventeen's hanging out her washing. She likes the smell. Her children come into the kitchen and pur their cereal. The man at number twenty one's painting his windowframes..." The more this went on, the more I just felt like... yeah, well, so what?

I've read quite a few really scathing reviews - hackneyed, clichéd, rambling, loose structure, pretentious etc etc but I found it absorbing. I did find it hard at times to distinguish who was who as you had to remember who lived where - but by not using actual names I felt it reflected life in a real street, we all talk like that, don't we, saying things like

Oh I saw the lady from no3 today

or

that boy from no 14 or whatever and I thought that was quite effective. You build up relationships with people bit by bit in real life.

And some of the imagery has really stayed with me. The man painting his house - I can see him now turning to look at the accident. very effective

And I like the title - it sticks in the mind - and I didn't find the sentiment itself at all hackneyed to be honest

Oh Pen! It's been a while since we had a good debate.

Ah!! That's so interesting Alice - becasue your feelings are exactly what a lot of the reviews reflect! I do see what you mean, but I think ot was the vagueness that appealed to me, I'm not at all a whimsical sort of person mind you, but I did find the book very atmospheric

Weird! I actually haven't read any reviews - I don't usually read about things too much before I see (films)/read them because I like to make my own opinions and in this case I read almost nothing.

I did think atmosphere was perhaps what I "should" have been getting but to be brutally honest, I didn't even get that, because of the flitting nature. As soon as you got inot something, it was taken away. Saying that, had the "observations" been a bit more off the wall/original, perhaps I would have liked the book better and forgiven the other faults. I just felt like they were things I'd read a hundred times before, I suppose.

Yes, I'm with you Mandy!  I think people who liked this one probably like The Accidental (Ali Smith) too - another book that I just loved because the way she uses language is just that much more creative, alive and interesting than most other books.  With Nobody Speaks... I feel McGregor took so many tiny little boring details of everyday life - the washing, the painting, all the other dull things we all do day in and day out without even thinking about them - and he created something beautiful and different out of them.  Exactly as the title says, these are all remarkable things - in this case made more remarkable by the context provided by the extraordinary event of the accident.  And these are all things we never talk about because they're the fabric of everyday life... but there is beauty in these details which goes overlooked.

I just finished reading this book this morning. I thought it was good but I had to have a break between chapters or else I got confused (which doesn't take much to be fair )

I found it heavy going but enjoyable and I dont know if its just me but I'm slightly confused by the end.

Did the boy with the sore eyes die and if yes, how come the girl didn't see the body get took from the house? The answer is probably obvious and I missed it. Like I said, I'm easily confused.

Shell

x 

I don't think you have to be easily confused to be confused by this book - I do agree it's confusing at times!

The boy with sore eyes did die (didn't he?), and the body isn't discovered for 3 days so I suppose that's why nobody saw...yes?

I really enjoyed this book and loved the style of writing. I think it is nice to read a book where things are just normal and it is the everyday things that you don't notice but that keep the world ticking over.

I liked the end of the book too and felt quite sad reading it. It makes you think about fate and does everything happen for a reason

I enjoyed the descriptions and found it very atmospheric - puts me in mind of a car advert that I remember on the tv about the city at night.

I did get confused at first and I too thought the character was a boy but am not sure if I just assumed this with the author being male. Once I got into the book I found that I couldn't put it down and am looking forward to reading another of his

I will have to add the accidental to my wishlist!

Don't get me wrong - I love reading about the fabric of everyday life and things that are real, and things that make me look again at the world in wonder at the beauty of ordinary things etc, but this book didn't do that for me.

I mean, take this start where he describes the city:

If you listen, you can hear it.
The city, it sings.
If you stand quietly, at the foot of the garden, in the middle of a street, on the roof of a house.
It's clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you.
It's a wordless song, for themost, but it's a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt when it sings.
And the song sings loudest when you pick out each note.

The low soothing hum of air-conditioners, fanning out the heat and the smells of the shops and cafes and offices across the city, winding up and winding down, long breaths layered upon each other, a lullaby hum for tired streets.

And so on, for a few pages...

And then I took this city description from another book:

I walked over to the bedroom window. The outside world was a long street and a facing row of terraced houses. There were regular lamp posts, irregualr telegraph posts and the sounds of a distant busy road - constant car engine hum, truck bang-clatter and occasional bass box thump, but - I squashed my nose up against the glass and looked left and right - no people. It was a cloudy day, grey and edgeless. I felt edgeless too. I suddenly had an urge to rush out of the house shouting for help and running for as long as I could so someone could see me and acknowledge me as a real person and they'd call a doctor or somebody who could fit me back into my proper place, the way a clockmaker realigns all the tiny mkaing inside a broken watch.

I think the second is infinitely better. More original, and let's you into a narrator's psyche... and without trying to be poetic, it actually is somewhat.

The first passage makes me want to scream: The city doesn't sing! Yes there are noises, but it doesn't sing. I don't know. Am I missing something?!