LATEST TITLES

RESERVOIR 13

by Jon McGregor (4th Estate, hardback £14.99, ebook £8.99)

A 13-YEAR-OLD girl goes missing while staying in the Peak District with her family for New Year.

This is the opening of Jon McGregor’s fourth novel, Reservoir 13, but don’t be fooled by the initial suggestion of crime drama – this unconventional narrative is not interested in pace, plot, or answering any of the questions it poses.

With a chapter for each year following the disappearance, inhabitants of the rural village find their dreams and imagination haunted by ‘Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex’. However, mostly, life carries on as before and McGregor’s collage-style narration delves in and out of different experiences within the community.

McGregor includes details of the surrounding natural world; the badger sett, fox family, bird movements, and seasonal changes.

It all makes for a unique reader experience, which can be enjoyable if you have patience to withstand the teasingly sparse plot.

THE WALWORTH BEAUTY

by Michele Roberts (Bloomsbury, hardback £16.99, ebook £10.79)

IN THE latest novel from previously Booker-shortlisted Michele Roberts, two lives that are separated by more than a century begin to intersect across time.

In 1851, family man Joseph is commissioned by Henry Mayhew to conduct research on the lives of prostitutes in south London.

Meanwhile, in 2011, Madeleine – middle-aged, divorced and unemployed – has hopes of finding a new life in Apricot Place in Bermondsey.

Roberts evokes past and present through vivid detail, from the velvet-slippered rooms of the Victorian pleasure houses to the slick city bars in the modern metropolis.

The Walworth Beauty is most successful in showing how time is woven into contemporary life and how the past informs the present.