One day in the life of a city street, in any city, any time. The various people inhabiting the houses experience the same weather, the same noises, but a multitude of different types of crisis. British newcomer Jon McGregor's first novel sets out with great intentions, and lays them proudly bare on his author's market stall, where they are to be admired and applauded.

Certain characters are very interesting: there is this boy who blinks a lot, who is totally in love with a girl from the neighborhood who doesn't even notice him. Although he seems to be a bit of a shy weirdo from outside, he is actually a very interesting character: passionate about archeology and anthropology, he would like to know all the humans better and he realizes that he doesn't even know the characters from his neighborhood well. In an attempt to see how an archeological-antropological study about his neighbors would look, he gathers objects and takes snapshots of his neighbors trying in this manner to know a bit of each one and to somehow make a bigger mental picture of the humans surrounding him. The misshapen pieces are delivered at a steady pace escalating in suspicion and trepidation, combining mellifluous prose magnified by the peculiar tonality of Mcgregor’s choice of words that slowly gathers momentum in a progressively frenzied cadence until the puzzle becomes whole in a culminating explosion of mystical significance. If nobody speaks of remarkable things then nobody will notice how remarkable they truly are. This novel speaks of the most ordinary things, and in doing so shows us they are quite simply remarkable. All of them are caught by the author on the day of the event. This is hinted at only with references like this. This book is like inviting people over for dinner promising an exciting four course meal and then dishing up a slice of cheese on toast served just as everyone is about to go home after having sat there salivating, getting bored and hungry all day while the host described to them in analyzing detail what all of his neighbours looked like yesterday while they waited at the table for a non existent meal to arrive.

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I know I ought just to go with the flow. This is a clean, bare, sensitive and undoubtedly well-intentioned piece of fiction by someone still in his 20s. It's admirably adventurous. Its determinedly unpunctuated dialogue more or less works. And I know what McGregor is aiming for - how he wants to create 360 o pans with his juddery word-camera and show us what's going on in a whole neighbourhood. How stuff that seems small and insignificant can have huge consequences. How the whole darn street can be buzzing with life, yet people are still pregnant and dying and lonely and alone. This book is event driven rather than plot driven. The one day described here is a day that leads up to an event that all of the characters will witness. The book-long buildup to the event does get exasperating at times, so impatient readers beware. And then he pulls a face and wipes his forehead with his hand and he says well less disconnected than other people at least.

And then around teatime, from nowhere, I smashed all the dirty plates and mugs into the washing-up bowl.Alternating with the day's progression is a second component of the narrative. One of the witnesses to "the event" describes her life three years after that day. Uncomfortable circumstances in her present life have caused her to reflect on what she witnessed and how it has affected her life since then.

A subtle sense of counterpoint is also a notable feature of the book. The new life the pregnant girl is coming to terms with is balanced with the inevitability of death; and just as the possibility of one relationship is closed down, another opens up. A prevailing fascination with gossip and celebrity is poised against an undeniable sense of isolation and anonymity. And the blatancy of large events is contrasted with the minute, everyday, ordinary things which make up most people’s lives, and which most people fail to notice.

Where the book did not work so well was in terms of the overall structure or plot, and in this it shows an issue I often find with modern English literature. Of course, I don't know how this book was written, but it feels like this to me: take a very talented writer, and then write to a predefined plan / plot and structure with a known outcome; don't allow any variation from that plot or structure; make sure the outcome is strongly hinted at all the way through so there is a sense of mystery being unraveled; don't unravel the mystery until the very end. This can work, but it all needs to be more subtle.