{"id":398,"date":"2018-01-14T21:54:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T21:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lapsedordinary.net\/?p=398"},"modified":"2018-01-14T21:54:08","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T21:54:08","slug":"book-review-reservoir-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/2018\/01\/14\/book-review-reservoir-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: Reservoir 13"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Jon McGregor was a guest on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b09dy2s8\"><em>A Good Read<\/em><\/a>, a BBC radio program where two guests and the host discuss their book choice, he chose a book with short essays on plants, stars and animals. It was as if he wanted to make the point that he really does see poetry in everything.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1481095579l\/32699538.jpg\" alt=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1481095579l\/32699538.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/33283659-reservoir-13\"><em>Reservoir 13<\/em><\/a> is his fourth novel \u2014 and also the fourth one I read. The book is about an English village where one day a thirteen-year old girl, on holiday in the village, suddenly goes missing. The book describes the thirteen years following this incident.<br \/>\nExcept that it is not really about the girl, or her disappearance. Though she is regularly referred to throughout the book, the fact that she&#8217;s always the thirteen-year old girl, while everyone else is getting older, is a clever way to show the passing of time, which is the book&#8217;s real theme.<br \/>\nIn short snapshots \u2014 thirteen per each of the thirteen years of the book; that is poetry too \u2014 one sees children grow up, couples grow closer together or drift apart, annual traditions continue yet change a little bit every year. None of the characters receives special focus and none of the story lines is particularly interesting in itself; it is what they make together that is very beautiful.<br \/>\nI have never lived in a village myself and it is not one of the life experiences I am very sad to have missed, yet I do appreciate there is something uniquely beautiful about small communities: a certain kind of poetry that is less noticeable in towns and cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Jon McGregor was a guest on A Good Read, a BBC radio program where two guests and the host discuss their book choice, he chose a book with short essays on plants, stars and animals. It was as if he wanted to make the point that he really does see poetry in everything. Reservoir [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,64,88],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}