‘There was weather’: Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13 and Climate Realism in the Contemporary British Novel

This chapter analyses the ways in which McGregor’s Reservoir 13 achieves a climate realism through its phenological narrative structure. I argue that the typical coordinates of the realist novel (character, plot, teleology) are almost entirely substituted in this novel by a narrative structure and style which presents humans as just one of many species embedded in a bioregion which is affected by subtly yet perilously shifting ecological patterns. My analysis focuses on the ways in which McGregor’s novel throws the human species into new focus within the context of an Anthropocene era marked by global capitalism and resultant climate change, while maintaining the lyrical quality found in the long tradition of pastoral writing.