A book of rhythms to be taken slowly. Don’t expect a fast paced mystery. Devour every word and every moment. Reservoir 13 is, quite simply, an extraordinary novel. It gives an innovative twist to the device of a missing girl; has a meticulously plotted structure and a mesmeric poetic style of writing. In April he first swallows were seen, swooping low over the pastures in the early morning and taking the insects which rose with the dew. And still the sound of a helicopter clattering by was never just the sound of a helicopter but everything that sound had once meant. Writing the second and third acts of the book involved McGregor researching aphasia, the impairment in the ability to communicate that follows an injury to the brain. As well as speaking directly to speech and language therapists, he began to go to a monthly self-help group for people living with aphasia, an experience that evidently had a profound impact on him. Partly, he says, it was that the members of the group – including carers and family – were so welcoming to him; and also the extent to which he realised how complex and varied aphasia is. “I think there’s almost as many different versions of aphasia as there are people with aphasia,” he explains; it manifests itself in semantic, cognitive and expressive difficulties, which often become tangled up.

The novel then unfolds over 13 chapters, one for each of the 13 numbered reservoirs in the surrounding area, each chapter set over a year in the life of the village. This is my kind of book. Slow moving like the surface of an undisturbed river, yet with currents underneath prepared to carry one away, toss a person like dross in its swirling, or pull one into subterranean depths. However, normal life slowly starts to resume and the rhythms of life take over. Relationships start and fail, people move away and new people arrive, businesses struggle, farmers go about their business, secrets are uncovered, the wildlife hibernates and reawakens as the seasons change and roll around - life goes on. I missed more ‘relationship- dialogue- and bonding’. I missed feeling close and intimate with at least a couple of characters.

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I am SO TORN about this book. I've been thinking about it for days. I think part of my issue is that how it is being sold to the reader - the disappearance of a girl, the fallout - is not really what the book is. It is true that there is a disappearance but it's a much slower book - about the town, the nature in the town, the seasons, all the little people and all their little lives, the cycles they go through, the long reaching effects of all of the tragedies, the girl included - the way secrets last and others don't, who never leaves and who never stays, who is trusted and who can't be.... all these tiny things beautifully written and forming the quilt of this place. The Lie of the Land does a fine job of debunking sepia-toned stereotypes. It casts the village not as some bastion of constancy and conservatism but as a lightning rod for change in the nation at large – electrified by Brexit, its future uncertain. Taken at face value, the book’s diagnosis makes you want to batten the hatches, or tether yourself to some standing stones in a field. And yet Craig explains that all this swirling topsoil is only one side of the story. Because the village has roots; the village has history. And the best village stories have one ear to the ground. Andy digs out a trinket that turns out to be a Jim’ll Fix It badge. The Essex earth contains horrors as well as gold As this begins, in this unnamed village in the Peak District of England, a family is on holiday with their thirteen year-old daughter, Rebecca, when she goes missing on New Year’s Eve. Beautifully written, with an ever-present sense of the narrator being less of a person or a being, and more as the all-seeing village that overlooks all, and looks over all. It looks over the landscape that surrounds them, the village and the villagers, watching as life changes with the seasons and the passing of time. The Costa beats the Booker and Goldsmith this year as second most perceptive judging panel of the year.

I can’t think of any other book to compare this to and I don’t know WHO to recommend this to. There is no “conclusion” to Rebecca’s story, just like there is no conclusion to the constant unfolding of the seasons. If you need resolution and full stop endings, better stay away from this one. Through meticulous layering of details and repetition Reservoir 13 marks the turning of the years. Every chapter, each of which takes us one year on, begins in the same way: a sentence noting the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Yet with a few small changes McGregor shows how life is changing for this community.

The book is considered a mystery of sorts as it starts with a 13 year old girl going missing when vacationing in an English village with her family. The author describes the continuation of life as the seasons change with the village events of one year for each of the books chapters. He felt as though he were holding the three of them, holding this room, this house. They made him feel at once immensely capable and immensely not up to the task.” The cycle of human life is echoed in the rhythms of the natural world — the flowering of trees and wild plants, mating and hibernation of wildlife and weather conditions marking the changing of the seasons. I was going to give this novel a solid 4 stars but in coming to the end of writing the review I can’t see why it should not merit a higher rating. So, 4.5 stars which makes it, rounded up, 5 stars. 😊

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. But this is not a thriller; McGregor is not interested in the missing girl’s family, nor the investigating detectives, who remain peripheral figures without names. Instead, the focus is all on the small community disrupted by a tragedy that may or may not have a direct connection with them. The author’s concern is with the way people go on with their lives, not only in the immediate aftermath but over the course of the next 13 years. They] spent their first days in the village slouching about with the sullen expressions of children who’ve grown up in the city and feel threatened by people willing to say hello.”He wanted to tell Lynsey and then he felt himself give way, hugely, the breath drawn out of him. It was like slipping into the reservoir in the middle of summer, the ice-cold water against his hot skin and all the sudden silence. He went way below the surface, into the dark, down to the silt and the stone foundations of the flooded villages, down to the unrelenting pull of the sluice.” I finished this yesterday mid-morning. I’m still thinking about it. I had a few discussions already.