Reservoir 13 (2016)

- PICKED BY ESTHER-
April 2021

This novel – about a rural town in the aftermath of the disappearance of a young girl – imagines the English rural in a non-romanticized manner that departs from (in the sense of both invoking and rebuking) the rural idyll/pastoral. According to John Armstrong, ‘McGregor’s Reservoir 13 is a quintessential post-pastoral text, …, yet with suggestions of child-murder and pedophilia that create a tense relationship between the novel and post-pastoral’s predominantly eco-critical bent.

Reah here: Pastoral Place and Violence in Contemporary British Fiction
by John Armstrong.