Janet Frame's The Reservoir is a collection of short stories, sketches, poem fragments, and short-form memoirs. Each story in the collection is set in New Zealand, the country in which Frame was born.
Frame has long been fascinated with human condition, how technology has changed the world, and the human condition more broadly. In each of the works in The Reservoir, Frame puts a laser focus on humanity's emptiness and feelings of discontent and disillusionment. In "The Reservoir," the first story in Frame's collection, for instance, a very young girl must transverse a very dangerous reservoir (based on the reservoir in Frame's hometown of Onui, New Zealand). That child, like her friends around her, was deeply impressed with the reservoir (even after hearing their parents tell of its horrors). But, despite their parents warnings against going to the reservoir, the children go—and horror ensues.
Though the collection is not widely read, The Reservoir was nominated for a very prestigious prize: the Commonwealth Writers Prize, which the collection earned in 1989. Academics feel similarly about the collection, which they see as one of the most culturally important collections of the century.
