Reservoir 13: WINNER OF THE 2017 COSTA NOVEL AWARD

Reservoir 13: WINNER OF THE 2017 COSTA NOVEL AWARD
Jon McGregor

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZEA GUARDIAN NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017From the award-winning author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and Even the Dogs. Reservoir 13 tells the story of many lives haunted by one family's loss.Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home.Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed.The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.As the seasons unfold there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together or break apart. There are births and deaths; secrets kept and exposed; livelihoods made and lost; small kindnesses and unanticipated betrayals.Bats hang in the eaves of the church and herons stand sentry in the river; fieldfares flock in the hawthorn trees and badgers and foxes prowl deep in the woods – mating and fighting, hunting and dying.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 stranger’s tragedy refuse to subside.

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Copyright (#uc7f1c705-477d-5051-bb13-cdc16a96a34f)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright © 2017 Jon McGregor

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

Photograph © Sandra Salvas

Extract from ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by Holly Stephens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and Faber and Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.

Jon McGregor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008204853

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008204877

Version: 2018-05-01

Epigraph (#uc7f1c705-477d-5051-bb13-cdc16a96a34f)

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

– Wallace Stevens

Dedication (#uc7f1c705-477d-5051-bb13-cdc16a96a34f)

i.m.

Alistair McGregor

1945–2015

Contents

Cover (#u0abd96b7-0023-5ed0-bdde-1270df6498e7)

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Copyright (#uefb5e650-fa2a-5638-a1ac-8c8f377a4757)

Epigraph (#uee599751-6f49-507d-a703-094aaf7fb0e9)

Dedication (#udc309cae-1cb3-583b-b0b4-4db7e11f802c)

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About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Jon McGregor (#litres_trial_promo)