Reservoir 13
Jon McGregor
Published by 4th Estate

There is a passage at the very end of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, where the author describes the attainment of enlightenment. As writing objectives go it’s a tall order, putting moments that occur outside language into words. But, I guess, that’s what earns you your spot. In his account, Hesse describes how time, individual existence and the constructions of being collapse, melding into one ever changing mass.

And all these forms and faces rested, flowed, reproduced, swam past and merged into each other, and over them all there was continually something thin, unreal and yet existing.”
Whether that’s how the mortal coil pans out is anyone’s guess. But should science prove otherwise, this little passage could definitely double as the sleeve notes for the 2nd edition of Reservoir 13. Mcgregor’s latest novel is one of the most meditative and transcendent pieces of art I have ever encountered. The prose have a river like quality; continual, swift and sparing. Events pour over each other, seemingly unordered and unconnected. Inferences, glances, gambles and crimes pass you by, heading down stream before you can make sense of them.

Played straight Reservoir 13 would be a tale of village life. A girl disappears, suspects abound and we are in standard ITV territory. But in Mcgregor’s hands this is the Archer’s on acid. No detail is favoured. The author attributes as much importance to the buzzard’s rebuilding of their nest or the arrival of fox cubs as to the pivotal moments in his characters lives. Affairs, divorces, arrests and vanishings all come and go with little or no explanation. There is a breadth to existence in the world of this novel that is truly stunning. It reads the way a photo would feel if you could take in all of it’s details simultaneously; Everything is foregrounded, the torrent of information overwhelming.
There is however nothing chaotic about this story telling. Subtle rhythms fill the pages like currents under the water. As in the world that surrounds them, the humans live cyclically. Relationships are returned to, mistakes are remade, dreams reoccur and pasts are never outrun. The question of Rebecca’s disappearance is continually dug up, spurring the same theories and doubts. As the sum of these parts the village too revolves around a pattern of behaviours. Fireworks at New Years, pantomimes at Christmas, the same grumbles about the quarry, the same fears and curiosities of each other.

Within this framework Mcgregor portrays the flow of their lives, with a realism that is neither cold nor fair. Nothing is idyllic, quintessential or neat. Nor is there the looming claustrophobia of a village in the style of Lars von Triers Dogville. Balances aren’t restored, losses are sustained, luck is had and things continue. The universe of R13 is infinite and amoral, but the actions of it’s inhabitants are treated with a rare tenderness. In the passage below, Richard, (who has known since his teenage years that he is in love with Cathy), explains to her, (now in late middle age) why they should be together.

They were financially independent; they’d been together before and there was something then that had worked and something they still had now.; they were both from the village, and belonged here, and they had an understanding of the place they could share. He’d actually numbered these points and was counting them off on his fingers. He seemed to have been talking for a while. She stopped him. Richard, she said. This isn’t like putting in a tender for a contract. You do know that, don’t you? He started to laugh and then realised she wasn’t joking and he didn’t know where to look. He was still bending back his little finger to indicate the fifth point. It was starting to hurt but he couldn’t let go.

I’ve re-read this passage a number of times. The last two sentences sit like a boulder in a brook, the narrative flow smashing up against them. Richard until this point has hardly been present in the story. But suddenly, left with his finger pinned back he’s made whole. This pattern reoccurs continually. Being is lent meaning through the simplest of actions. Richard’s point is to be with Cathy, Martin’s is to be a butcher. Irene’s is to clean, Jackson’s to raise sheep. These are the ways they have chosen to make sense of themselves. Not bare bones or unresolved characters, but an identification of their quintessence. There is a humanity at the heart of each of them that has lived with me long after the novel finished.

Similarly, Mcgregor’s portrayal of sex within the story is at once touching and real. Here 16 year olds James and Sophie end their fledgling relationship, alone at her parent’s house.

Mind you, she said., my parents aren’t due back for hours. she watched him as she unbuttoned her top. Well, this is confusing, he said. He shifted on the sofa. But if you’re going to be like that about it. She reached for the button of his jeans and they kissed again, quickly and pulled off just enough clothes to have sex. He came quickly with a shout and a sigh and afterwards she stayed astride him for a moment, stroking the side of his face and telling him they would always be friends. And once they’d wriggled back into their clothes she told him as though it were nothing, as though she’d only just thought of it, that actually Lynsey really quite liked him and he should think about that at some point.

As with enlightenment, sex is a frustratingly elusive thing to put into words. Choices often seem to say more about the author than the subject. But McGregor's portrayal is beautifully sparse, a set of evocative images and half spoken truths. Broken hearts, drunken fumbles, decade long affairs and overly loyal marriages are all recounted with the same concise understatement. I found myself falling in love with the spaces between the paragraphs, wondering what I didn’t know, what else would be revealed and how these lives being uncovered, would end.

Making sense of why you like something is hard. Ostensibly Reservoir 13 is a tale of disappearance. A 13 year old girl vanishes at it’s start and the expectation of the novel is to solve that mystery. But Becky Shaw is never found, her absence remains unexplained and the small suspicions Mcgregor arouses are rarely extinguished. They are brave choices, that upturn convention and grip hold of the reader. Instead the story is constructed around a series of gaps. Why do relationships end? How do people cope with grief? Why do we stay when we know we shouldn’t?
Mcgregror offers no answers. Instead he creates a mesmerising reflection on the surface of the story. So comforting and so honest that it’s impossible to pull your eyes from.