Sometimes, a good book can do funny things with time. I flew through this book and in many ways it felt like it was over in the blink of an eye, but I somehow lived a whole lifetime while doing it.
A Reservoir Man tells the story of Michael, a man born in the 1940s, as he grows up through the latter half of the twentieth century. We get to live it too through his eyes, and there is a danger with this sort of book that it feels like a grand tour of global disasters, but Ambrosio struck the balance perfectly. Michael’s life couldn’t help but be scarred by the AIDs crisis, or by 9/11, but life still continues and that was written to great effect.
For most of the book, I felt quite ‘arm’s length’ from the action; like I wasn’t quite being let in to the emotion of the characters. It was all worth it though; when that emotional catharsis did come at the very end, it made it all the more effective and packed a punch in the final page.
The one drawback for me was the writing style; the author’s background in film definitely shone through as the narrative had a screen-play feel to it, and it would have been nice to have a smoother, more varied prose. That being said, it may be to some people’s personal taste, and it did make it a much faster read.