Book Club #17: Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

Okay, first I want to acknowledge that this month’s book club is a little late. I’ve been super behind on my reading recently, so I didn’t have any new reviews to share with you and I didn’t want to half cobble something together either on a book I hadn’t read or one from years ago, so here we are.

But I do think that the little bit of extra waiting time, or slow reading time, has meant that this month’s book fell into my consciousness at just the right time because I was in the mood for all things crime after binging My Favorite Murder.

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor centres around the disappearance of 13-year-old Rebecca Shaw when she is out on a walk with her parents whilst on a rural holiday. From its premise Reservoir 13 would appear to be your typical countryside murder mystery whodunnit thriller, a modern Midsommer Murders if you will. But life in the village doesn’t grind to a halt “there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.”

Because of McGregor’s focus on the life of the village after Rebecca’s disappearance, 13 years of the life of that community, in fact, Reservoir 13 is a slow burner. If you’re looking for a thrilling, detective lead crime novel, I can imagine you would find yourself frustrated by the lack of time spent discussing the disappearance itself and the extreme delayed gratification offered by McGregor’s structure.

But if you’re prepared to invest some time, and some patience, Reservoir 13 has a lot to offer. The cyclical structure of the novel, each chapter starts with the breaking of a new year, provides a picturesque pastoral on how countryside villages evolve over decades. Within that each fleeting glimpse at the characters of the village allows the reader to build a picture in their mind of the relationships and characters as the novel progresses. No one character is ever completely defined as in life. It’s truly a masterful example of show don’t tell in order to give a character life.

But what is most impressive, and bet described by Maureen Corrigan of the Washington Post is how McGregor “generates suspense, not out of chase scenes or sly dialogue, but out of the extended narrative experience of waiting — waiting for something, anything, to break in Rebecca’s case.” This is why Reservoir 13 really struck home for me after reading about the Golden State killer, and all of cold cases which go on for years and years, but still have the ability to capture the imagination because even if they’ve half-forgotten there’s still that need for closure.

I think Reservoir 13 has two distinct audiences, which I am at the perfect venn diagram centre of. In circle one, if you’re a true crime fan (even though this isn’t a true crime) the realism of this new sort of a crime novel might appeal to you. In circle two you’ve got your lovers of all domestic and fly on the wall style dramas where you get to really consider how other people live, every day and in times of strife. What a combination! There’s a reason it was long-listed for the Man Booker last year after all.

SOME QUESTIONS TO PONDER AS YOU READ

• How does Reservoir 13 compare to other murder mysteries you’ve read? Which conventions remain the same, which change?
• McGregor introduces us to a whole village of characters throughout the novel, were there any who really stood out to you above the rest as you were reading?
• How does the novel’s cyclical, annual, structure impact your sense of time as you were reading?
• We hear very little about Rebecca Shaw, how does that shape your internal image of her and your connection to her as the central victim of the story?
• There’s a real focus on country life as the plot progresses, how do the lives of the people from the village differ from your own? How do you think a similar situation would unfold where you live?

IF YOU WANT SOME FURTHER READING TRY…

• Kicking it off with another classic Guardian review
• This New Yorker review goes into a lot more depth about Jon McGregor as a writer and offers a number of really interesting insights, as well as being very well written
• The Washington Post focuses in on the structure and use of delayed gratification, if that’s your cup of tea
• If you’re after a quick review which really succinctly gets across what Reservoir 13 is all about, then this piece from The Literary Review is the one for you

IF YOU WANT MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS HAVE A LOOK AT…

• James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life
• Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood
• Jon McGregor’s The Reservoir Tapes
•  Herman Koch’s The Dinner
•  Any Agatha Cristie

Natalie