Reservoir 13 (McGregor) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Reservoir 13 … then take off on your own:

SPOILER ALERT: Proceed at your own risk if you've not finished the book!

1. The Guardian (in the UK) asks a question in the opening of its Reservoir 13 review, which is this: "Why is it always a girl who's missing?" Care to talk about that? Would the loss of a boy have the same attavistic tug that a girl engenders?

2. What were your expectations at the onset of the book? Were you certain that Rebecca would be found?

3. How does author Jon McGregor raise our expectations and build suspense? Someone cuts away the river weeds. Children ask about a boarded up old led mine. A school boiler house is destroyed. What were your feelings as each these events was underway?

4. Whom did you suspect?

5. What about all the villagers who lives are glimpsed at — Geoff the potter, Sally and her marriage and dangerous brother, Irene and her special needs son, Jackson the farmer? Do you get to truly know any of them? Or does the author keep us at a distance, like a distant hawk circling above? Do you find any one of the characters particularly sympathetic? As the years passed, were you caught up in their stories?

6. Is this novel a murder mystery at all? What is it? By it's end, does the book shed any light on the first question posed in this set of discussion questions: why is it always a little girl who goes missing?

7. How does Rebecca's disappearance affect the villagers? How does its impact change over time?

8. Were you engaged by Reservoir 13 … or bored? Were you impatient ... or irritated? Is there a payoff in the end? What was your experience while reading the novel, and how did you feel at its end? Would you recommend the book to others?

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