If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor, Bloomsbury Publishing (released in Canada through Raincoast Books), 275 pages, paperback, $16.95

What lay behind this claim? The Brazilian literary press wrote that Martel had stolen the premise for his book from a 99-page novelette, Max e Os Felinos, by the Brazilian writer, Moacyr Scliar. On a superficial look, when one doesn’t bother to read either, it would seem that the Brazilians were right. But, as it turns out, the only similarity is that the main character in both books become shipwrecked and shares his lifeboat with a feline. Even the New York Times got caught up in the tempest in a dinghy. It carried a claim about plagiarism in a front page story, but whoever wrote the piece obviously had never read either book. It contained numerous errors that, no doubt, had to be retracted later on.

Now Lester & Orpen Dennys have published Scliar’s novella in a translation by Eloah F. Giacomelli under the title of Max and the Cats. This little book has three chapters, and each takes place in a different locale. The first finds the "hero" Max as a youth in Germany prior and shortly after Hitler comes to power. The cat in his life there is a stuffed Bengal tiger. The second finds him stranded at sea, with a jaguar as his lifeboat companion. The final chapter is set in Brazil, and feline that haunts him there is an onça, a sinister wildcat living in the jungle above his farm.

The story, simply told, with little exterior description, is in a way about coming-of-age, and is about how Max eventually learns to conquer fear. That is where one finds the depth of the book. Each of the felines represents a sinister, or hostile force in his life, a violent father, . . .

[Max and the Cats by Moacyr Scliar, Lester & Orpen Dennys, 99 pages, paperback, $14.95]

While at the peripheral subject of Man Booker Prize winners and nominees, there is a noteworthy book by the youngest author ever selected for the long list of the Booker Prize. He failed to make the short list with his book, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, but to have achieved the initial nomination shows his writing has more than just potential. He is 26-year-old Jon McGregor, a Briton born in Bermuda, where his father had been posted as a curate. Most of his childhood, however, was spent in Norwich, and he now makes his home in Nottingham.

McGregor graduated from the University of Bradford in media technology and production, but never entered this profession. Yet, when reading his book that training is very evident. He frames his scenes and cuts in and out of them smoothly and with considerable ease. The first six pages of the opening chapter inform the reader of the sounds of the unnamed city into which he has placed his story. By doing so, he begins to focus in more and more into that city until the view is finally pointed at a specific street on the last Sunday of summer. There is poetry in this approach, in the rhythm of the main narrative voice, in the brief snapshots of the various inhabitants of that street, who eventually will become more fleshed out in later chapters.

While McGregor claims as one of his inspirations for writing is the Canadian, Douglas Coupland, and his Generation X, his style is totally unrelated, and his vision is far deeper and lacks Coupland’s cynicism. In addition, McGregor has a very unconventional way of . . .

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