Reservoir 13

Finished May 9
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

This book was recommended to me by Ben McNally, and although it wasn't what I expected, I really enjoyed it. The novel takes place in a small town in rural England. One winter, a teenage girl on holiday with her parents goes missing. A search is mounted, but the girl is not found. But activities for the inhabitants of the town go on, more or less as they had done before. As the book follows a variety of people who live there, who arrive their after this event, and who leave for various reasons, we see the life of a town and its people. The small secrets, the kindnesses and resentments, the family dynamics. We see the cycle of nature, year after year, and the events large and small.
I loved how each year was a chapter, and that while some scenes of interaction were included, so were straightforward descriptions of what happened.
One example

The summer had been wet but in September the skies cleared and the mud in the lanes was baked into thick-edged ruts. There were springtails under the beech trees behind the Close, burrowing and feeding on the fragments of fallen leaves, and somewhere deep in the pile a male laid a ring of sperm. A blackbird's nest was blown from the elder tree at the entrance to the Hunter place, the mud mortar crumbled and the grasses scattered as chaff. Tony produced an arrangement of hops for the Harvest Festival display, and it was certainly striking but there were some who felt the pungent smell was out of place in a church. Jones's sister was seen at the post office, buying packaging paper and string, and this was understood as some kind of breakthrough. Irene sometimes told people that Jones's sister had been at her wedding, and had been the very life and soul. Such a shame, what happened, she would say. As though anyone actually knew. On Sunday in the evening Brian and Sally Fletcher at a meal together. Brian grilled lamb chops and boiled potatoes while Sally made a salad. It was a rule they had, to make sure they did this. For most of the week they kept different hours, and communicated through notes on the kitchen table. This suited them both. They had come to marriage late, and were each comfortable in their own company. But they'd decided they should always eat together on a Sunday night. I don't want to go forgetting what you look like, Brian had said. A meal, and a conversation, and then settling down together to watch whatever was on television. It was something about a murder, on the whole. At the allotments Ruth was seen working alone, pulling handfuls of beans down from the overloaded canes. The leaves were covered in blackfly but this late in the season she wasn't concerned. It was food for the ladybirds at least. She was letting the courgettes mature to marrows because even if no one really liked cooking them they did look good in baskets outside the shop. They made people think of harvest festivals, and that made tem come into the shop and spend money. The blackberries were thick on the brambles growing up around the greenhouse, and she thumbed a few into her mouth each time she went past. There had been words with the allotment committee about the brambles. The matter was not yet settled. Her phone beeped, and when she read the text a smile opened on her face that she found herself hiding behind a berry-stained hand. She sat on the bench for a moment, watching the shadows lengthen across the valley and feeling the warmth and thinking carefully about her reply. 

shows both the close observation and the narrative distance that occurs throughout the book. It is as though the narrator observes moments and strings them together in a loose connection by time. My enjoyment with this book grew as it progressed. The missing girl comes up each year as people still think about her and wonder what happened to her. But life here goes on, as it must.