Jon McGregor’s first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, a surprise inclusion on the 2002 Booker longlist that went on to win the Somerset Maugham and Betty Task Awards, captured 24 hours in the life of a suburban street. Fifteen years later, his fourth novel, Reservoir 13, has a similarly concentrated focus, but this time on a village in the north of England and the lens remains open for 13 years.
McGregor’s portrait of a village is an astonishing feat. He gives us the nature surrounding and intrinsic to the place in prose both precise and poetic (‘In the beech wood the foxes gave birth, earthed down in the dark and wet with pain, the blind cubs pressing against their mothers for warmth’) and conjures an impressive range of 50-odd characters, slipping easily among their voices and thoughts, each one alive with complexity.
As McGregor takes us, sentence by sentence, from, say, foxes to primroses, to a lone runner, to a parish council meeting, to the lambing, to a flirtatious conversation between a farmer and a school teacher, the village soon feels greater than the sum of its parts, becoming a whole living organism, which we watch develop over the years.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in