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veronicafrance 's review for:
The Reservoir Tapes
by Jon McGregor
I have two strong recommendations: 1) read Reservoir 13 first and 2) listen to this as a podcast (available from the BBC), rather than reading it as a book, and preferably spin out the pleasure in small doses. The voices with their northern accents add so much to these multi-faceted stories around the disappearance of Becky and the quality of reading in every single episode is superb. Special mention to the technical excellence of episode 1, in which you hear just one side of a conversation and yet it fully conveys the feelings and reactions of the unheard person.
Each story in itself is beautifully done, so finely observed and characterised, and as a whole they are more than a sum of the parts. Instead of the broad bird's eye view in Reservoir 13, you get piercing insights into each character's head. Again, there's no solution to Becky's disappearance, but McGregor repeatedly raises uneasy suspicions in the listener's mind. While at the same time you have a broader sense of how every community hides male violence against women (physical and psychological); that people both know and refuse to know that it happens.
I'm just so impressed with both these works. My best reading and listening of the year so far.
Each story in itself is beautifully done, so finely observed and characterised, and as a whole they are more than a sum of the parts. Instead of the broad bird's eye view in Reservoir 13, you get piercing insights into each character's head. Again, there's no solution to Becky's disappearance, but McGregor repeatedly raises uneasy suspicions in the listener's mind. While at the same time you have a broader sense of how every community hides male violence against women (physical and psychological); that people both know and refuse to know that it happens.
I'm just so impressed with both these works. My best reading and listening of the year so far.