Reservoir 13: A Novel Paperback – October 3, 2017 by Jon McGregor (Catapult)

After finishing this novel it took me awhile to sort of step back and think about how I really felt about it. When I first saw this book recommended for me I thought how strange I don't like Mystery novels and ignored it. Then I looked at it closer several months later and realized it's not a mystery novel at all. I think that is where some of the bad reviews come from, people who were expecting some elements of a mystery novel. The only thing mysterious that happens here is that a teenage girl disappears but we don't really spend much time trying to figure out how or why. Sure, there are possible reasons that are bandied about by the towns people, the police, other teenagers who sort of kind of knew her, but the main character in Reservoir 13 is the town and it's people and how the disappearance of the teenage girl may have affected the town, or maybe the point really is that her disappearance didn't affect the town much at all in the grand scheme of things. Everyone continued to live their lives, they went to school, went to their jobs, or found new jobs, fell in and out of love, had children, grew old, make mistakes and generally after awhile a sort of monotonous poetic beauty emerges from the narrative where we are given brief encounters with a plethora of people and their day to day and eventually year to year activities.

Some people will and from the 1 star reviews find this boring. I found it hard to put it down once I started, not because I was expecting the girl to be found or some clue to be unearthed, but because I felt the writing and the story of the town beautiful and compelling. I almost felt like I was watching a local news channel. I think one of the greatest compliments I can pay Jon McGregor is that there were times I had to remind myself this was a work of fiction. Perhaps because essentially there is no story here is why is felt so raw and real.

My only real complaint was that there were so many characters we come to know that after awhile I felt as if I was mixing some of them up and I almost felt like I needed a spreadsheet to keep track of them all.