2017 Booker Prize longlist: Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

This thread is for discussion of Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. No spoilers, please.

A 13 year old girl goes missing in an English village. The whole village participates in a search for the girl but without any result.
What follows are 13 chapters describing the village and its inhabitants in the 13 years following the incident.
We get to know a lot of these inhabitants and what happens in their lives. We also read about the yearly changes in seasons and nature, the animals coming and going and the yearly events and celebrations in the village. In the background there is always the missing girl.
McGregor pulls the reader into the story with short sentences full of meaning. Subjects which are being touched upon in a certain year, turn out to be relevant for what happens the next year, subjects which seem so important turn out not to be at all. Just like real life!

Quite an original novel, beautifully written. Shortlist worthy for sure!

However I had such high expectations that for me the book could not completely live up to them.

I just finished it, and I agree with you. It's a possible SL candidate, beautiful writing and another original novel form. Yet then again I didn't get much invested in it, except for the couple of times when I thought "talk people, just talk!", but then usually another two years or so later most issues were resolved. I could also have done with a smaller number of characters. Some stayed with me from the introduction, like Will Jackson or the Coopers and the teenagers, others still confused me in year 13. I loved how nature was woven in, the yearly mating season of the foxes, later the cubs, the pheasants, how the seasons came and went and were different from year to year.
one question only!!!! for those who read it: were we supposed to find out anything?

>3 Deern: I forgot how to do the spoiler protection! Can you explain once more?

It's the sign for "smaller than" (which isn't shown when I type it, that's why I write it out), then the word "spoiler", then the sign for "greater than" and to end it "smaller than slash" and again "spoiler" and "greater than"

Thanks! I don't think we were supposed to find out anything. Personally I suspected Jones with his secret boiler room but it turned out I was wrong. I liked that, that McGregor pulled me in the detective role but didn't give me the solution.
There was this moment someone' dog found the girls' bodywarmer but its owner didn't notice it.

WARNING: THIS IS A BIG SPOILER

>6 Simone2: I had the same suspect, and then somehow also the lady (Claire? Cathy? all those names...) who always walked the dog and "non-reacted" to the jacket, i.e. looked at it, saw what it was and walked away. And descriptions has been everywhere. And then the guy with the kiln, but he wouldn't have thrown the clothes away I guess, he would just have burned them. Well... In the end I was glad we weren't told, just as it often happens in RL with those cases of missed persons

I absolutely loved this book - it's gorgeous in its writing, complex, real, innovative... I could go on and on. I think the thing I liked about it the most was that McGregor made me care about the town and the characters despite the fact that (other than the girl going missing at the beginning) nothing out of the ordinary really happens. The lives of all of the characters felt very normal to me, and yet I was hooked on their small dramas.

This is the fifth book I've read so far, and it's my pick to win it all right now.