Book of the Decade

Not what I expected, not at all. It is November, and there is a struggle as to which book I would pick to grant it this honour. The contest is between Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions and Jon McGregor’s So Many Ways to Begin. Two very different novels in so may ways, yet similar in their supreme quality.

And then I began reading If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, also by Jon McGregor. I was mesmerized. I enjoyed its slow pace and serene setting, its simplicity and the suspense it carried along, a clash of the senses. The movement from present to past, and the not knowing how that past affected the present, even if it was clear it did. And then I got to the ending, and just like a true piano masterpiece, there was a change of pace as things got intense, and then a resolution that returned to the serenity previously portrayed. The perfect ending, and one that actually left me in shock for the greater part of one day.

At the very last gasps of the year, of the decade, I had found my true book of the decade, one written back in 2002 and with which I stumbled upon not until 2009. One that flashed a fantastic picture of contemporary Britain, one that received raves and was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2002, and which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2003.

And Jon McGregor, I have only flowers for that man. Two books  in one decade, two books in his lifetime, one on my shortlist for book of the decade, and the second one a winner. I take my hat off to you, you brilliant Englishman.

Posted in Books, Reviews