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Sign up todayReservoir 13
The Reservoir Series: Book #1
Narrator
Matt Bates
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
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Length
8 hours 48 minutes
Language
English
In midwinter in an English village, a teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks, and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed.
As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together and those who break apart. There are births and deaths, secrets kept and exposed, livelihoods made and lost, small kindnesses, and unanticipated betrayals.
An extraordinary novel of cumulative power and grace, Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a tragedy refuse to subside.
Jon McGregor is the author of several novels and a story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Award, and Somerset Maugham Award, and his work has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is professor of creative writing at the University of Nottingham, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters.
Matt Bates is a voice actor who can be heard in video games, documentaries, audiobooks, and other media.
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Reviews
“One I wish I’d written myself…Its structure, pace, detail, tone, humanity—it’s a quiet masterpiece.”
“Haunting and heartbreaking…His best yet.”
“A humane and tender masterpiece.”
“Bates narrates the story with precisely the English accent one would imagine in this seemingly quaint village. HIs calm, low-key delivery perfectly sets the mood for the story…Bates has narrated the story to mirror McGregor’s vision.”
“Matt Bates…[is] an excellent choice of narrator for an audiobook that explores the minutiae of how people return to daily life after a tragedy has struck…Listeners will hear a tightly controlled, low-voiced portrayal of inexplicable loss. Fans of literary fiction delivered in the style of radio theater will enjoy the experience.”
“Novels aspire to be social documents, group portraits, measurers of time, renovators of the ordinary, but few come close to achieving those ambitions. This entrancing book does.”
“[A] gesture toward the sweep of history, reminding us that the struggles that seem so momentous to one group of people will someday be forgotten.”
“A work of intense, forensic noticing: an unobtrusively experimental, thickly atmospheric portrait of the life of a village.”
“Jon McGregor has revolutionized that most hallowed of mystery plots: the one where some foul deed takes place in a tranquil English village that, by the close of the case, doesn’t feel so tranquil anymore.”
“Excels at charting how, over the years, relationships fray, snap, or twine together…McGregor again highlights the remarkable in the everyday.”
“A singular and haunting story.”
“An atmospheric, meticulously crafted novel, begins like a mystery then quickly morphs into something altogether different.”
“Brilliant…McGregor’s novel’s subtly devastating impact ultimately imparts wisdom about the tenuous and priceless gift of life.”
“McGregor’s writing is extraordinary, and…[a] treatise on timelessness and human nature…Highly recommended.”
“[A] village that is still haunting me, and which, because of the rich detail of the prose, I feel I’ve lived in before, and for which, on closing the book, I found myself homesick.”
“Reservoir 13 is deeply stirring and incredibly poetic. While the intricacies of relationships and the echo of sorrow over one family’s loss ripples through years of ordinary days, the simple flow of daily life in a small town will resonate with everyone who has lived in or visited a rural area. This beautiful and melancholic book is perfect for anyone who wants to explore the deep connections of a small but tight-knit community.”
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