When Jon McGregor's debut novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things appeared in 2002, it marked the arrival of a novelist who was determined to awaken in his readers an enhanced apprehension of the wonder of the everyday – of the numberless sounds that constitute the "wordless song" of urban life. Listen carefully to the "low soothing hum of air-conditioners", the book told us, and you will hear something magical: "long breaths layered upon each other, a lullaby hum for tired streets".
Over the course of his career, McGregor has continued to draw his readers’ attention to the richness and the fecundity of the apparently ordinary life. Yet he has also displayed a tendency to explore such territory by attending to the ways in which such lives can be affected by instances of extremity.
In Even the Dogs (2010), he set out to examine the effects of the sudden death of Robert, an alcoholic, on a group of working-class addicts with whom he has associated in the final years of his life. And in his latest and remarkable work, Reservoir 13, he attempts once more to document the ways in which an instance of violent anomaly can reverberate in the land of the overlooked and the ostensibly undistinguished.
Set in a nameless town somewhere in the English Midlands, the book opens in midwinter, early in the present century. A 13-year-old girl by the name of Rebecca Shaw has been holidaying in the area with her parents and has gone missing.
In the course of her stay in the town, she has formed only a handful of slight relationships. But the community is shaken by her disappearance, and as the book opens – in darkness, and at early morning – we encounter an array of the town’s residents gathered in a car park as they prepare to help the police with their search. The scene is solemn and ominous, the assembled volunteers grave and laconic: “It was cold and there was little conversation. There were questions that weren’t being asked.”
As the year unfolds and Rebecca’s whereabouts remain undiscovered, rumours, suspicions and stories about her fate spread through the town – a place where she was hardly known, but in which her absence has transformed her into a spectral and almost omnipresent figure who seems to occupy the collective consciousness of the populace.
Gradually, the years slip by. No trace of Rebecca is found. And we observe the town’s inhabitants as they carry on with the difficult business of carrying on.
McGregor grants us access to these lives by keeping us relatively distant from them. He hovers over the community he has created with an almost disinterestedly attentive omniscience, directing his gaze now to a group of local teenagers, now to Jackson the farmer, now to Martin and Ruth Fowler and their troubled marriage, now to Jones the caretaker. The novel is richly and densely peopled, and although McGregor only permits the reader relatively brief encounters with his characters’ lives, as we return to them over the years we come to know them with an unsettling and affecting degree of intimacy.
The effect is cumulative. We see people making errands; parents on school runs. And occasionally we are offered glimpses of their silent anxieties and private dreams.
That these should arrive with such intensity is testament to McGregor’s sense of control and restraint. There is a volume, as he puts it in the book, to what is not being said. And this volume is amplified by his determination to see the world in which his characters move in its entirety.
He draws our attention to its customs and its rhythms, and to many of the non-human forms of life that contribute to the making of a place. We are asked to notice tiny changes in the seasons. We see wood pigeons gathered to roost at dusk. We join bats “folded deeply into hibernation” in the eaves of a church. And we often do so in precise and carefully modulated prose.
McGregor shows us “slabs of glassy ice turning on the black water”. He describes how, “The sun cut further into the valley and under the ash trees the first new ferns unfurled from the cold black soil.”
As he does so, the people of the town get on with their lives. Rebecca remains unfound and unknown, and might one day be unremembered. But there is a sense in which she has been absorbed into the lineaments of the community in which she vanished. And that in this way, perhaps, she will never quite be gone.
Matthew Adams is a regular contributor to The Review.
Ticket prices
- Golden circle - Dh995
- Floor Standing - Dh495
- Lower Bowl Platinum - Dh95
- Lower Bowl premium - Dh795
- Lower Bowl Plus - Dh695
- Lower Bowl Standard- Dh595
- Upper Bowl Premium - Dh395
- Upper Bowl standard - Dh295
MATCH STATS
Wolves 0
Aston Villa 1 (El Ghazi 90 4' pen)
Red cards: Joao Moutinho (Wolves); Douglas Luiz (Aston Villa)
Man of the match: Emi Martinez (Aston Villa)
PSA DUBAI WORLD SERIES FINALS LINE-UP
Men’s:
Mohamed El Shorbagy (EGY)
Ali Farag (EGY)
Simon Rosner (GER)
Tarek Momen (EGY)
Miguel Angel Rodriguez (COL)
Gregory Gaultier (FRA)
Karim Abdel Gawad (EGY)
Nick Matthew (ENG)
Women's:
Nour El Sherbini (EGY)
Raneem El Welily (EGY)
Nour El Tayeb (EGY)
Laura Massaro (ENG)
Joelle King (NZE)
Camille Serme (FRA)
Nouran Gohar (EGY)
Sarah-Jane Perry (ENG)
DUNE%3A%20PART%20TWO
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Tips for taking the metro
- set out well ahead of time
- make sure you have at least Dh15 on you Nol card, as there could be big queues for top-up machines
- enter the right cabin. The train may be too busy to move between carriages once you're on
- don't carry too much luggage and tuck it under a seat to make room for fellow passengers
Company%20Profile
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Wicked
Director: Jon M Chu
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.
When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.
How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
A timeline of the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language
- 2018: Formal work begins
- November 2021: First 17 volumes launched
- November 2022: Additional 19 volumes released
- October 2023: Another 31 volumes released
- November 2024: All 127 volumes completed
The specs
Engine: 2.7-litre 4-cylinder Turbomax
Power: 310hp
Torque: 583Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh192,500
On sale: Now
The specs
Engine: 2-litre or 3-litre 4Motion all-wheel-drive Power: 250Nm (2-litre); 340 (3-litre) Torque: 450Nm Transmission: 8-speed automatic Starting price: From Dh212,000 On sale: Now
UAE SQUAD
Mohammed Naveed (captain), Mohamed Usman (vice captain), Ashfaq Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Shaiman Anwar, Mohammed Boota, Ghulam Shabber, Imran Haider, Tahir Mughal, Amir Hayat, Zahoor Khan, Qadeer Ahmed, Fahad Nawaz, Abdul Shakoor, Sultan Ahmed, CP Rizwan
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Zimbabwe v UAE, ODI series
All matches at the Harare Sports Club:
1st ODI, Wednesday, April 10
2nd ODI, Friday, April 12
3rd ODI, Sunday, April 14
4th ODI, Tuesday, April 16
UAE squad: Mohammed Naveed (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Shaiman Anwar, Mohammed Usman, CP Rizwan, Chirag Suri, Mohammed Boota, Ghulam Shabber, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Amir Hayat, Zahoor Khan, Qadeer Ahmed
if you go
The flights
Air Astana flies direct from Dubai to Almaty from Dh2,440 per person return, and to Astana (via Almaty) from Dh2,930 return, both including taxes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Ritz-Carlton Almaty cost from Dh1,944 per night including taxes; and in Astana the new Ritz-Carlton Astana (www.marriott) costs from Dh1,325; alternatively, the new St Regis Astana costs from Dh1,458 per night including taxes.
When to visit
March-May and September-November
Visas
Citizens of many countries, including the UAE do not need a visa to enter Kazakhstan for up to 30 days. Contact the nearest Kazakhstan embassy or consulate.
Retail gloom
Online grocer Ocado revealed retail sales fell 5.7 per cen in its first quarter as customers switched back to pre-pandemic shopping patterns.
It was a tough comparison from a year earlier, when the UK was in lockdown, but on a two-year basis its retail division, a joint venture with Marks&Spencer, rose 31.7 per cent over the quarter.
The group added that a 15 per cent drop in customer basket size offset an 11.6. per cent rise in the number of customer transactions.
Farasan Boat: 128km Away from Anchorage
Director: Mowaffaq Alobaid
Stars: Abdulaziz Almadhi, Mohammed Al Akkasi, Ali Al Suhaibani
Rating: 4/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
Four-day collections of TOH
Day Indian Rs (Dh)
Thursday 500.75 million (25.23m)
Friday 280.25m (14.12m)
Saturday 220.75m (11.21m)
Sunday 170.25m (8.58m)
Total 1.19bn (59.15m)
(Figures in millions, approximate)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Company%20Profile
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TO A LAND UNKNOWN
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Starring: Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa
Rating: 4.5/5
The biog
Favourite film: The Notebook
Favourite book: What I know for sure by Oprah Winfrey
Favourite quote: “Social equality is the only basis of human happiness” Nelson Madela. Hometown: Emmen, The Netherlands
Favourite activities: Walking on the beach, eating at restaurants and spending time with friends
Job: Founder and Managing Director of Mawaheb from Beautiful Peopl
Company%20Profile
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Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
