Wide fange of views in book group of Jon McGregor's If Nobody Speaks...

Revival of book group last night after a +1-year hiatus discussed Jon McGregor's first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002), with a wide range of responses and reactions among the 6 of us, ranging from JoRi's enthusiasm for the beautiful writing (all concurred to a degree, especially impressed by the first section in which JMcG describes the sounds and the silences of a city neighborhood) to my annoyance and frustration with his willfully difficult narrative style - mixing third- and first-person narration, confusion about the time sequence, many undeveloped plot points, manipulative narrative structure  (teasing us with the allusion to a tragic event at the outset, leading to an let-down payoff at the end), refusal to name major characters, lack of clarity on key plot points (does the young man in #18 die at the end? what about the boy struck by the car? what is it that the twin has to tell the young woman at the end?), and even internal plot contradictions for example how could the young woman not know the fate of the young man in #18? When she meets his twin, wouldn't she immediately know: Oh, your brother is the young man who died tragically after the car accident. That said, I acknowledge this is a debut novel by a young writer who's interested in unconventional narration, and I noted that I would guess his most recent novel - Reservoir 13 - which is also a ind of group narration (portrait of 13 years in the life of a small town or village), is much easier to read, as his style most likely has matured and as he has learned more about life (first novels are often experimental and difficult, as young writers often draw more on their imaginations and creative abilities and less on life experience). (I was correct in my guess that JoRi was drawn to this writer by James Wood NYer review, which oddly was not so keen on this book but praised Reservoir.) Much discussion about the twin issue in this novel: what does it signify (3 sets of twins in the novel; we really came to know conclusions on this point), and in fact are the young man and the man in #18 (collecter of oddities, quiet observer, secretly in love w/ the young woman, in despair after seemingly failing to save the child from car collision) one and the same? Also some discussion without much resolution on the theme of injured hands and on the significance of the death by fire of a young wife and the surviving child's visions of angels. Also, we wondered about the sociopolitical context: By the end it's clear that this is a mixed-race neighborhood, w/ at least some of the residents being Muslim/Indian/Pakistani; there are some early hints at this, but this becomes completely apparent only at the end when suddenly some of the characters have (Muslim) names. Is JMcG holding this out on readers for some reason, or would most English readers just expect an urban neighborhood to be multi-racial? No clear answers on this point either. But, please, if you eschew standard plots, why not at least give your characters names. Help us out a little! Final note: I was alone in thinking the title is a bit of a joke, a paradox (if nobody remarks then they're by definition not remarkable).