The Reservoir by David Duchovny -- BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

The Reservoir by David Duchovny (2022, Akashic Books)

David Duchovny's new books, The Reservoir, is a novella about Ridley, a man living through the lockdown phase of the pandemic in an Upper West Side apartment overlooking the Central Park Reservoir in Manhattan. He retired early from a job on Wall Street, so the lockdown leaves him with time on his hands to contemplate art, solitude, New York, his relationship with his daughter, what it means to be a grandfather, and life itself.

Ridley's reverie is disturbed by a light flashing in the window of an apartment across the park. He believes a woman is communicating to him, trying to make a connection. It may be enough to get him outside of his apartment for the first time in months. His adventure starts there.

I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. What a story! The humor might not appeal to everyone – it reminded me of Philip Roth, masculine, self-deprecating, and subtly sarcastic. But that’s the kind of humor I like. 

The Reservoir is funny, audacious, imaginative, and clever, full of literary allusions and quirky humor. In the end, though, it is a classic tragedy for contemporary times. It’s a story that will stick with me.

NOTES

Yes, we're talking about that David Duchovny, from The X-Files. He writes books. He also has a band. 

Maybe everyone knows these things except me, because I know less than nothing about celebrity news. But I learned about his writing career (and his singing/songwriting) when I watched The Chair, a low-key hilarious tv show in which Sandra Oh plays the chair of the English Department at a Northeast liberal arts college. Duchovny gets foisted on her as the big ticket speaker for the annual literary lecture and she’s peeved. This clip is my favorite scene. Bear with the little ten-second teaser at the beginning. Duchovny plays himself and steals the show. 

When I saw on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program that he had a new book, I was willing to give it a try. 

Have you read any Duchovny books? Would you read this one?