The Reservoir Tapes, Jon McGregor
The Reservoir Tapes, Jon McGregor
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The Reservoir Tapes

Author: Jon McGregor

Narrator: Fiona Hardingham, Justine Eyre, Sarah Nichols, Tim Gerard Reynolds, Ralph Lister, Simon Vance

Unabridged: 3 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/07/2018

Synopsis

Returning us to the extraordinary territory of Jon McGregor’s Man Booker Prize long-listed novel Reservoir 13, The Reservoir Tapes take us deep into the heart of an English village that is trying to come to terms with what has happened on its watch.A teenage girl has gone missing. The whole community has been called upon to join the search. And now an interviewer arrives, intent on capturing the community’s unstable stories about life in the weeks and months before Becky Shaw vanished. Each villager has a memory to share or a secret to conceal, a connection to Becky that they are trying to make or break. A young wife pushes against the boundaries of her marriage, and another seeks a means of surviving within hers. A group of teenagers dare one another to jump into a flooded quarry, the one weak swimmer still awaiting his turn. A laborer lies trapped under rocks and dry limestone dust as his fellow workers attempt a risky rescue. And meanwhile a fractured portrait of Becky emerges at the edges of our vision―a girl swimming, climbing, and smearing dirt onto a scared boy’s face, images to be cherished and challenged as the search for her goes on.

About Jon McGregor

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.

About Fiona Hardingham

Fiona Hardingham is a British-born actress, singer, voice-over artist, and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. On stage, she appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in her comedic one-woman show The Dark Show. She has also starred in the dark-comedy short film The Ballerino. She earned a BA honors degree in performing arts from Middlesex University, London, and also studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

About Justine Eyre

Justine Eyre has turned her passion for reading and remarkable facility with accents into her dream career. This classically trained, multilingual actress has narrated well over 400 audiobooks and has been honored to receive a coveted Audie Award and multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. Appearing in leading roles onstage in King Lear and The Crucible, she has also graced the screen in Two and Half Men and Mad Men amongst her many television credits.

About Tim Gerard Reynolds

Tim Gerard Reynolds is an established audiobook narrator who has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards and was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for Best Fantasy Narration. He trained for the stage at the Samuel Beckett Center at Trinity College in Dublin and the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in New London, Connecticut.

About Ralph Lister

Ralph Lister is an experienced actor and voice artist who trained at LAMDA. He spent fifteen years in mainstage theatre in London, Madrid, Hong Kong, and Edinburgh before moving to America, where he focuses on film, television, and audiobook narration.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance, a former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader, is a full-time actor who has appeared on both stage and television. He has recorded over eight hundred audiobooks and has earned fifty-seven Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, including one for his narration of Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. A multiple Audie finalist, Simon has won Audie Awards for The King's Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, and The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Winner of the 2008 Booklist Voice of Choice Award, Simon has also been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jaline on July 29, 2018

An interviewer comes to the small English village to interview Becky Shaw’s parents after she has disappeared. On the tape, we only hear the interviewer’s words, not those of Becky’s parents. What happened to the tape? Where we previously (in Reservoir 13) experienced this village from a more distant......more

Goodreads review by PattyMacDotComma on November 24, 2022

5★ “And had you seen anyone else, had you passed anyone on the track, had you seen anyone in the distance? Now this will, I understand I’m sorry Can you be clear about when you first realised Becky was out of sight? And you assumed. she was coming up the steps out of the clough? You were not long out of it......more

Goodreads review by Paul on November 21, 2022

They'd agreed to talk to Becky about it later, when they went out for their walk. Reservoir 13 will, I strongly suspect, end up as my book of 2017, one of the most innovative and enjoyable books I have read for years. My review: [URL not allowed] It told the story of an Englis......more

Quotes

“A companion piece to his Man Booker–longlisted Reservoir 13, McGregor’s latest works perfectly well as a stand-alone, offering an alternately sweet and suspenseful depiction of a community as it reacts, person by person, to the disappearance of a teenage girl.” Entertainment Weekly

“An electrifying new novel…stylish and alarming.” Los Angeles Times

“Turns the concept of a thriller on its head, building suspense through a close examination of the everyday trials of witnesses, neighbors, and those simply passing by. The result is sharp, brooding work about the evils present in men and the cruel desires that lurk just below the surface.” Cedar Rapids Gazette (Iowa)

“McGregor returns to an English village touched by the mystery of a young girl’s disappearance to delve deeper into its daily life…[in] spare, elliptical tales…This collection is a fresh reminder of his versatility and talent.” Shelf Awareness

“A thriller of another kind, one where the writing is deft and the mood uneasy, this book illuminates the complexities of the human condition in a truly imaginative way.” LitHub

“In the follow-up to his Costa Award-winning novel Reservoir 13, McGregor’s newest book focuses on the crime at the center of its predecessor.” Millions

“A brilliant book about social realities…A thriller of another kind, one where the writing is deft and the mood uneasy, this book illuminates the complexities of the human condition in a truly imaginative way.” Literary Hub

“On its own, this book is a noteworthy event. When put in conversation with Reservoir 13, it is nothing short of a remarkable experiment in storytelling. McGregor is a must-read writer.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“McGregor demonstrates an extraordinary ability to create complex, multidimensional characters in only a few spare sentences. He is also a master of mood, investing his stories with an air of the ominous while proving also to be a superb stylist…A memorable celebration of literary fiction.” Booklist (starred review)

“McGregor is a maestro at demonstrating the reverberations of catastrophe across space and time, building strong backstory and consequences in only a few lines. As a stand-alone, the novel is quietly consuming, but as a companion to Reservoir 13, it serves as an exquisite elaboration on the mysterious characters that are the heart of both novels.” Publishers Weekly

Awards

  • Millions.com Pick
  • Indie Next List
  • Entertainment Weekly Pick
  • LitHub Pick
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