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The Fell
At dusk on a November evening in 2020 a woman slips out of her garden gate and turns up the hill. Kate is in the middle of a two week quarantine period, but she just can't take it anymore - the closeness of the air in her small house, the confinement. And anyway, the moor will be deserted at this time. Nobody need ever know.
But Kate's neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate's son, soon realizes she's missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk - a breath of open air - falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain rescue operation . . .
Unbearably suspenseful, witty and wise, The Fell asks probing questions about the place the world has become since March 2020, and the place it was before. Sarah Moss's novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive, and it will move you to tears.
But Kate's neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate's son, soon realizes she's missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk - a breath of open air - falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain rescue operation . . .
Unbearably suspenseful, witty and wise, The Fell asks probing questions about the place the world has become since March 2020, and the place it was before. Sarah Moss's novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive, and it will move you to tears.
184 pages, Hardcover
First published November 11, 2021
239 people are currently reading
9,107 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Moss
29Ìýbooks1,754ÌýfollowersSarah Moss is the award-winning author of six novels: Cold Earth, Night Waking, selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone, all shortlisted for the prestigious Wellcome Prize, and her new book Ghost Wall, out in September 2018.
She has also written a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, which was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2013.
Sarah Moss is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick in England.
She has also written a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, which was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2013.
Sarah Moss is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick in England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,028 reviews
September 16, 2021
4.5
It’s early evening in November 2020, Kate should be self isolating for fourteen days but she’s feeling claustrophobic and the lure of the Peak District Fells is proving hard to resist. Her elderly neighbour Alice sees her leave her property but it takes a while for her teenage son Matt to realise that she’s broken the quarantine rules. The story is told from several perspectives.
I love the way that Sarah Moss writes and have been very impressed with her all novels and this one is equally impressive. Yes, it’s a pandemic novel but it’s unlike others I’ve read as it deals with the reality of lockdowns, the impact on personalities of isolation and the different way that people experience and react to it. It’s beautifully written, it’s extremely reflective making you think. Matt’s teenage sections are so well constructed as his random thoughts flit from one thing to another, especially food (well he is a teen) but this changes to a feeling of powerlessness which is overwhelming. Alice's thoughts, her vulnerabilities, the irritations, her ways of keeping deeper musings and concerns at bay, her care, concerns and kindness are very well done too. You do feel as if you are inside their thoughts and it seems almost natural that you are. Kate’s claustrophobia, her reflections on life before and in the now come across powerfully as she attempts to distract herself with household tasks and worthless items but she becomes more and more unsettled and imprisoned. You feel her relief at being outdoors but then witness a change which becomes incredibly tense and suspenseful. Her painful experience elicits deep reflection, it’s very powerful especially as the storytelling takes an almost supernatural turn with some very clever symbolism. Throughout it all the brooding Derbyshire Peak District landscape allures with its beautiful wildness but flatters to deceive as it’s reveals its potential danger to the unwary.
Overall, this is without question one of the best pandemic inspired novellas. It’s immersive reading and very thought provoking and written in a visually stunning way so scenes come alive. This is one to savour and remember
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Pan McMillan, Picador for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.
It’s early evening in November 2020, Kate should be self isolating for fourteen days but she’s feeling claustrophobic and the lure of the Peak District Fells is proving hard to resist. Her elderly neighbour Alice sees her leave her property but it takes a while for her teenage son Matt to realise that she’s broken the quarantine rules. The story is told from several perspectives.
I love the way that Sarah Moss writes and have been very impressed with her all novels and this one is equally impressive. Yes, it’s a pandemic novel but it’s unlike others I’ve read as it deals with the reality of lockdowns, the impact on personalities of isolation and the different way that people experience and react to it. It’s beautifully written, it’s extremely reflective making you think. Matt’s teenage sections are so well constructed as his random thoughts flit from one thing to another, especially food (well he is a teen) but this changes to a feeling of powerlessness which is overwhelming. Alice's thoughts, her vulnerabilities, the irritations, her ways of keeping deeper musings and concerns at bay, her care, concerns and kindness are very well done too. You do feel as if you are inside their thoughts and it seems almost natural that you are. Kate’s claustrophobia, her reflections on life before and in the now come across powerfully as she attempts to distract herself with household tasks and worthless items but she becomes more and more unsettled and imprisoned. You feel her relief at being outdoors but then witness a change which becomes incredibly tense and suspenseful. Her painful experience elicits deep reflection, it’s very powerful especially as the storytelling takes an almost supernatural turn with some very clever symbolism. Throughout it all the brooding Derbyshire Peak District landscape allures with its beautiful wildness but flatters to deceive as it’s reveals its potential danger to the unwary.
Overall, this is without question one of the best pandemic inspired novellas. It’s immersive reading and very thought provoking and written in a visually stunning way so scenes come alive. This is one to savour and remember
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Pan McMillan, Picador for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.
December 10, 2022
Published today 11/11/2021
This book is the latest by the author of (most recently) “Ghost Wall� in 2018 and “Summerwater� (in 2020). It will I think appeal strongly to fans of the latter as it shares much in common with that novel: a setting on a single day; a remote and harshly beautiful countryside setting; a build up of narrative tension; a series of third party point of view chapters (albeit in this book the chapters circle round the same group of four characters) � all written in a largely internal, loosely stream-of-consciousness style, often a little repetitive and circular (albeit in the way of people’s actual thoughts) and with clearly distinct internal voices for each character.
Where perhaps it loses out to that novel is in the absence of the natural vignettes that distinguished “Summerwater� � although we do hear have a raven whose imagined dialogue with one of the characters makes it effectively the fifth key character of the novel. Where I think it wins out is in avoiding an over-dramatic and rather manufactured climax.
But perhaps the most impressive part of this novel is that it engages with the reality of COVID and lockdown � not like so many other novels inventing a different virus but dealing with one we are actually experiencing and I have to say capturing rather brilliantly a particular time and place � England in November 2020 and the second, and very unwelcome, national lockdown. It also captures excellently the issues with lockdown � the understandable prioritization of the acute-illness capacity of the NHS at the expense of the short (and who knows if long term) mental health of a nation.
The four characters of the book are: Kate � a single Mum, Matt her son, Alice her widowed neighbour recovering from cancer and so clinically vulnerable and Rob a divorced volunteer mountain rescuer with a teenage daughter he sees at weekends. Kate has been exposed to a COVID case so she and Matt are isolating, but when the claustrophobia of it gets too much Kate decides to walk up into the deserted moors (spotted by Alice who does not report her despite the attentions of her one child � a now married daughter with two children). When she does not return as darkness closes in, Matt alerts the authorities, while up on the moor Kate is in serious difficulties after a fall and Rob and his colleagues scramble to find her (Rob fearing she has deliberately gone to the moor to commit suicide).
Matt is probably the least well voiced character � albeit capturing a teenage boy is a challenge. Rob’s chapters are interesting for the ambiguity about what motivates his volunteering and whether it is really an escape from family responsibilities. Kate’s chapters are ambitious with her injury induced delirium conversations with the raven. But the strongest for me by far were Alice’s which really capture so many of the nuances of lockdown.
Definitely worthwhile.
My thanks to PanMacmillan, Picador for an ARC via NetGalley
This book is the latest by the author of (most recently) “Ghost Wall� in 2018 and “Summerwater� (in 2020). It will I think appeal strongly to fans of the latter as it shares much in common with that novel: a setting on a single day; a remote and harshly beautiful countryside setting; a build up of narrative tension; a series of third party point of view chapters (albeit in this book the chapters circle round the same group of four characters) � all written in a largely internal, loosely stream-of-consciousness style, often a little repetitive and circular (albeit in the way of people’s actual thoughts) and with clearly distinct internal voices for each character.
Where perhaps it loses out to that novel is in the absence of the natural vignettes that distinguished “Summerwater� � although we do hear have a raven whose imagined dialogue with one of the characters makes it effectively the fifth key character of the novel. Where I think it wins out is in avoiding an over-dramatic and rather manufactured climax.
But perhaps the most impressive part of this novel is that it engages with the reality of COVID and lockdown � not like so many other novels inventing a different virus but dealing with one we are actually experiencing and I have to say capturing rather brilliantly a particular time and place � England in November 2020 and the second, and very unwelcome, national lockdown. It also captures excellently the issues with lockdown � the understandable prioritization of the acute-illness capacity of the NHS at the expense of the short (and who knows if long term) mental health of a nation.
The four characters of the book are: Kate � a single Mum, Matt her son, Alice her widowed neighbour recovering from cancer and so clinically vulnerable and Rob a divorced volunteer mountain rescuer with a teenage daughter he sees at weekends. Kate has been exposed to a COVID case so she and Matt are isolating, but when the claustrophobia of it gets too much Kate decides to walk up into the deserted moors (spotted by Alice who does not report her despite the attentions of her one child � a now married daughter with two children). When she does not return as darkness closes in, Matt alerts the authorities, while up on the moor Kate is in serious difficulties after a fall and Rob and his colleagues scramble to find her (Rob fearing she has deliberately gone to the moor to commit suicide).
Matt is probably the least well voiced character � albeit capturing a teenage boy is a challenge. Rob’s chapters are interesting for the ambiguity about what motivates his volunteering and whether it is really an escape from family responsibilities. Kate’s chapters are ambitious with her injury induced delirium conversations with the raven. But the strongest for me by far were Alice’s which really capture so many of the nuances of lockdown.
Definitely worthwhile.
My thanks to PanMacmillan, Picador for an ARC via NetGalley
March 2, 2022
Set in November 2020 when most of the world was on lockdown on account of the global pandemic, Sarah Moss’s The Fell revolves around Kate, who furloughed from her job , is self-isolating at home with her son Matt, due to exposure to COVID -19 . Feeling restless and stir crazy, one evening she decides to go for a walk along the hills close to home, falls and is seriously injured . Not knowing what has happened to his mother Matt correctly assumes that his mother went for a walk and is initially annoyed that she broke the law by venturing out of the house while supposed to be in quarantine . However, as the night progresses and after it is confirmed that Alice,their next door neighbor, saw her walking towards the moors , the search for Kate develops into a mountain rescue operation amidst worsening weather conditions.
The story is told through a stream of consciousness narrative from the perspectives of four people- Kate, Matt, Alice and Rob. Kate’s thoughts flit between her financial worries compounded by fear of being fined on account of her breaking quarantine laws , her son Matt and the life choices she is made to reflect upon through a dazed and delirious conversation with a raven she meets on her expedition. Matt concerned for Kate’s physical and emotional well-being is made to mull over his own behaviors and feelings, realizing how much is at stake for him for his mother to return home safe and sound. On one hand we see him as a difficult self absorbed teenager while on the the other we see the mature way in which tries to remain hopeful busying himself with household chores while responsibly interacting with his next door neighbor Alice keeping with quarantine regulations . Alice is an elderly widow and cancer survivor struggling to adjust to the isolation brought on by the pandemic and recent widowhood , but tries to remain hopeful and keep up Matt’s spirits while making plans to lead a fuller life once the pandemic ends. Rob, the mountain rescue volunteer whose team along is tasked with finding Kate, ponders over whether Kate’s action were deliberate and whether she was driven to drastic behavior motivated by personal reasons while also questioning his own motivations for volunteering for such risky endeavors in his downtime often at the cost of his personal relationships.
The author takes us on an insightful exploration into the mind and thoughts of people in the midst of the global pandemic. This short novel delves deep into the emotional toll of forced isolation and uncertainty on the human psyche and the need for human interaction and contact in trying times. The author does not hesitate to touch upon how lives and livelihoods are affected when regulations set in place for the greater good out of consideration for the health and well being of others can test individuals' power of endurance and push them to their limits. Tense and fast paced, reflective and thought provoking, The Fell is an almost too relatable depiction of how the pandemic has changed the way we live, think and behave. Once I adjusted to the stream-of-consciousness narrative, I was completely reeled into this relatively short but immersive novel. Though this is not a lengthy novel (more a novella, to be precise), it is very deep and absorbing . I took time to pause and take a breather when it felt too heavy or just got too real. This was my first Sarah Moss novel and I look forward to reading more of her work.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the eARC in return for an honest review.
January 4, 2022
People primarily feeling sorry about themselves, or if not overtly that, then minutely describing what causes them inconvenience or self doubt. This first longer fiction I read about COVID-19 disappointed me.
� you can’t sign out of community and it’s not that she’d usually want to.
, with its one day in a pandemic focus, felt rather pedestrian and depressing. Kate, a furloughed single mom, is the main character and her quarantine breaking towards the hills behind her English village home goes very awry. Her teenage son Matt is game addicted, a recreational drugs user and in general bored. Then we have a bit better of elderly neighbour who very much fears the virus due to her recovering from cancer.
Despite writing competently a lot of the book is characters musing on how the pandemic impacts them, what they can't do, worries nothing will ever be the same and reflecting on the overwhelming urge to do things they now can't.
You’ll be lucky to live to regret this is something a fantasy raven tells a character somewhere and I do agree, the characters all show a rather deep lack of self reflective tendencies and what a boon it is to live in a relatively rich country during a global pandemic. The feeling of unrest and discomfort is well captured but in the end just felt oppressive and whiny in a sense.
Life, then, to be lived, somehow is something thought at the end of the book, and again that is such a truth it is hard to disagree with. But I felt it, and the story covered in The Fell, is just not enough to satisfy me as a reader.
� you can’t sign out of community and it’s not that she’d usually want to.
, with its one day in a pandemic focus, felt rather pedestrian and depressing. Kate, a furloughed single mom, is the main character and her quarantine breaking towards the hills behind her English village home goes very awry. Her teenage son Matt is game addicted, a recreational drugs user and in general bored. Then we have a bit better of elderly neighbour who very much fears the virus due to her recovering from cancer.
Despite writing competently a lot of the book is characters musing on how the pandemic impacts them, what they can't do, worries nothing will ever be the same and reflecting on the overwhelming urge to do things they now can't.
You’ll be lucky to live to regret this is something a fantasy raven tells a character somewhere and I do agree, the characters all show a rather deep lack of self reflective tendencies and what a boon it is to live in a relatively rich country during a global pandemic. The feeling of unrest and discomfort is well captured but in the end just felt oppressive and whiny in a sense.
Life, then, to be lived, somehow is something thought at the end of the book, and again that is such a truth it is hard to disagree with. But I felt it, and the story covered in The Fell, is just not enough to satisfy me as a reader.
May 29, 2023
Read this in 2 days. Couldn’t put it down. Written in the same prose as Milkman.
A women falls in The Fell during the pandemic…and can’t be found…everyone’s thoughts are so interesting and profound�
5 out of 5 stars
September 13, 2021
In The Fell Sarah Moss’s effective at capturing the claustrophobia, uncertainty and isolation so central to the experience of Britain’s Covid-19 pandemic at its height. Her novel’s set in the Peak District, an area where a fantasy of chocolate-box, rural England rubs up against stretches of unexpected, rugged wilderness. Into this landscape Moss inserts countercultural, single-parent Kate and teenage son Matt struggling to get by, but living cheek-by-jowl with wealthy, pensioner Alice, a widow, shielding because of cancer. And alongside them is Rob, a mountain rescue volunteer. A small cluster of people separated by a strict lockdown who are equally, suddenly, thrust together by a single transgressive act. Moss’s narrative unfolds over one day and night. It’s dominated by long, winding sentences, chains of associations, digressions and dead ends, as Moss moves from one character’s perspective to another. Much of the book's taken up with interior monologues reflecting the solitude and distance imposed by lockdown, the exhausting, everyday mechanics of avoiding infection.
Moss’s characters aren’t just connected by proximity, or even by the process of living through unparalleled crisis, but by an underlying sense of peril, both immediate, domestic and more broadly existential. Their thoughts shifting from mundane commentary or overt distractions to their keen awareness of the instability of everything around them, political divisions, fractured society, and the spectre of climate change. There are moments too of coming together, acts of kindness, shared concerns. It’s a depiction of a reality that will be familiar to many, although there are also a number of absent voices: marginal and seen only in the distance, the homeless and displaced; figures like Kate’s neighbour Samira who puts in a puzzlingly brief appearance. I was reminded at times of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours similarly preoccupied with questions of connection, and how to live, how to deal with the weight of days but � although I find aspects of Cunningham’s vision deeply flawed - The Fell is less richly descriptive, less thoughtful in its stance. Moss’s story’s almost too realistic at times, preserving rather than creatively reinventing the territory it covers. Teenage Matt often seems quite peripheral, a minor function of plot, Alice is probably the most well-realised of the group, but even here there’s a tendency to edge towards cliché. Although the slightly surreal encounter between Kate and a raven, both alone in the November night, is an interesting attempt at disrupting this rather conventional story, it felt more of a gesture than anything else, it didn’t have the eerie, mythic force of the more satisfying elements of earlier books like Cold Earth. But even though this wasn’t the compulsive read I’d hoped for, I still found it engaging enough to hold my attention.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Pan Macmillan, Picador for an arc.
Rating: 2.5/3
Moss’s characters aren’t just connected by proximity, or even by the process of living through unparalleled crisis, but by an underlying sense of peril, both immediate, domestic and more broadly existential. Their thoughts shifting from mundane commentary or overt distractions to their keen awareness of the instability of everything around them, political divisions, fractured society, and the spectre of climate change. There are moments too of coming together, acts of kindness, shared concerns. It’s a depiction of a reality that will be familiar to many, although there are also a number of absent voices: marginal and seen only in the distance, the homeless and displaced; figures like Kate’s neighbour Samira who puts in a puzzlingly brief appearance. I was reminded at times of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours similarly preoccupied with questions of connection, and how to live, how to deal with the weight of days but � although I find aspects of Cunningham’s vision deeply flawed - The Fell is less richly descriptive, less thoughtful in its stance. Moss’s story’s almost too realistic at times, preserving rather than creatively reinventing the territory it covers. Teenage Matt often seems quite peripheral, a minor function of plot, Alice is probably the most well-realised of the group, but even here there’s a tendency to edge towards cliché. Although the slightly surreal encounter between Kate and a raven, both alone in the November night, is an interesting attempt at disrupting this rather conventional story, it felt more of a gesture than anything else, it didn’t have the eerie, mythic force of the more satisfying elements of earlier books like Cold Earth. But even though this wasn’t the compulsive read I’d hoped for, I still found it engaging enough to hold my attention.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Pan Macmillan, Picador for an arc.
Rating: 2.5/3
July 8, 2024
5 stars
short review for busy readers: a highly detailed “historical� novel that explores the stresses and problems of normal people in the 2nd Covid lockdown in November 2020. Told in a light stream of conscious style from the POVs of 4 people. Simple plot, but highly engaging and relatable. Slightly slow read, but wonderfully rendered.
in detail:
It’s strange to term a novel about an event only a few years past as “historical,� but The Fell does such an excellent job of delving into a highly specific time and place (November 2020, rural England/Peak District) that it really does feel like a piece of historical fiction.
Kate is a single mum who has made a number of blunders in her life. Currently, she and her early teen son are supposed to be in two week quarantine due to a possible exposure to Covid. But Kate is an outdoorsy person who will go stir crazy if cooped up for long, and one night she decides to take an hour’s long hike up into the hills. Who would notice?
It’s Kate’s breaking of quarantine and the possible effects of what happens to her in the hills that provides the ethical and moral backbone of the novel.
Told in a light stream-of-consciousness style, we see the events of that night from the perspective of Kate and three other people involved in her night hike. This style makes it a little challenging to get into the story at first, but once in, the choice of such a style is a good one for conveying the stream of doubts, fears, resentment, cruelty, broken promises and boredom the pandemic brought with it.
And just like in the British novella , we have a raven acting as a therapist for Kate as she grapples with everything that’s gone wrong in her life.
The Fell is a highly accomplished semi-literary work that documents recent history in a way that will find readers and fans decades from now. "That's exactly how it was," they will say.
Well worth the read.
short review for busy readers: a highly detailed “historical� novel that explores the stresses and problems of normal people in the 2nd Covid lockdown in November 2020. Told in a light stream of conscious style from the POVs of 4 people. Simple plot, but highly engaging and relatable. Slightly slow read, but wonderfully rendered.
in detail:
It’s strange to term a novel about an event only a few years past as “historical,� but The Fell does such an excellent job of delving into a highly specific time and place (November 2020, rural England/Peak District) that it really does feel like a piece of historical fiction.
Kate is a single mum who has made a number of blunders in her life. Currently, she and her early teen son are supposed to be in two week quarantine due to a possible exposure to Covid. But Kate is an outdoorsy person who will go stir crazy if cooped up for long, and one night she decides to take an hour’s long hike up into the hills. Who would notice?
It’s Kate’s breaking of quarantine and the possible effects of what happens to her in the hills that provides the ethical and moral backbone of the novel.
Told in a light stream-of-consciousness style, we see the events of that night from the perspective of Kate and three other people involved in her night hike. This style makes it a little challenging to get into the story at first, but once in, the choice of such a style is a good one for conveying the stream of doubts, fears, resentment, cruelty, broken promises and boredom the pandemic brought with it.
And just like in the British novella , we have a raven acting as a therapist for Kate as she grapples with everything that’s gone wrong in her life.
The Fell is a highly accomplished semi-literary work that documents recent history in a way that will find readers and fans decades from now. "That's exactly how it was," they will say.
Well worth the read.
November 16, 2021
How can writers capture the feeling and repercussions of the pandemic in their fiction? As early as May 2020 an anthology called came out which included work from writers around the world responding to the ongoing crisis and Ali Smith's included the pandemic as part of its storyline. It's curious to see how such recent events are embedded in a past which is now being fictionalised � especially as there's the possibility we could return to a state of lockdown and quarantine at any time. Although we usually go through our lives with little sense that we're living through history most people understand that these extraordinary times have significantly and permanently altered the world. Having so many people isolated in their homes has led to enormous emotional, financial and physical consequences. It's often remarked that writers need a sufficient distance from events to fully encapsulate their larger meaning in literature, but that depends on the strategy the author takes.
In her new novel Sarah Moss' tactic is to embody the immediate thoughts and actions of four different characters in a village. “The Fell� is set in November 2020 during the second national lockdown in England when residents were ordered not to leave their homes. Kate is a single mother who recently lost her job at a cafe because of the pandemic and now worries about how she'll pay her bills. Although she knows she's breaking the rules, Kate leaves her adolescent son Matt at home to go for a solitary stroll across the countryside. She does this despite the threat of government fines and citizens being encouraged to inform upon any neighbours who break the rules. It says something about her state of mind and the pressure she's under that her feet seem to lead her outside and that she doesn't return even when it's getting dark and she knows the sensible thing would be to turn back. Though the risk is small, the stakes are high. And this is the dilemma we've all faced over the past two years when for many people it's more a question of personal responsibility than any outside pressure to follow the rules.
Things go badly wrong for Kate and it changes what's only been a theoretical crisis into a real crisis. The narrative revolves between the perspectives of Kate, Matt, their older neighbour Alice who is shielding at home and rescue worker Rob. It movingly follows the mental process many of us have gone through when confined at home with all the attendant fear, boredom, frustration and self-pity as well as feelings of guilt for reacting like this when we reason that there are other people who are suffering in more severe ways than we are.
Read my full
In her new novel Sarah Moss' tactic is to embody the immediate thoughts and actions of four different characters in a village. “The Fell� is set in November 2020 during the second national lockdown in England when residents were ordered not to leave their homes. Kate is a single mother who recently lost her job at a cafe because of the pandemic and now worries about how she'll pay her bills. Although she knows she's breaking the rules, Kate leaves her adolescent son Matt at home to go for a solitary stroll across the countryside. She does this despite the threat of government fines and citizens being encouraged to inform upon any neighbours who break the rules. It says something about her state of mind and the pressure she's under that her feet seem to lead her outside and that she doesn't return even when it's getting dark and she knows the sensible thing would be to turn back. Though the risk is small, the stakes are high. And this is the dilemma we've all faced over the past two years when for many people it's more a question of personal responsibility than any outside pressure to follow the rules.
Things go badly wrong for Kate and it changes what's only been a theoretical crisis into a real crisis. The narrative revolves between the perspectives of Kate, Matt, their older neighbour Alice who is shielding at home and rescue worker Rob. It movingly follows the mental process many of us have gone through when confined at home with all the attendant fear, boredom, frustration and self-pity as well as feelings of guilt for reacting like this when we reason that there are other people who are suffering in more severe ways than we are.
Read my full
May 24, 2022
This took me through such a range of emotions and at the same time took me back to the second UK lockdown in November 2020. Kate and her teenage son xxx, living in a small house on the edge of the Peak District National Park, have been in close contact with someone with Covid, and are having to stay at home for two weeks. But Kate cannot stay home. She cannot stand the claustrophobia one second more and so leaves the house for a walk, but doesn't return. We also hear from her elderly neighbour, Alice who sees her go, and from xxx, part of the mountain rescue team that is called out after Kate fails to return home. It's written in a stream of consciousness style with all four characters taking turns - some of whose voices I felt more deeply than others. But what was really clever was how I was taken back to that rollercoaster of emotions: Of course we should all stay home, it's for everyone's good; I don't want a government that I didn't vote for and who is handling this very badly to tell me what to do; it's ok for the young people - they aren't the ones who are dying; but it's the young people who will suffer the most - missing two years of social interaction and education; or the eldest with fewer years left and being stuck inside. Exactly how my thoughts rolled at the time. An uncomfortable and well written book.
February 8, 2022
I am beginning to appreciate the meditative style of Sarah Moss more and more. I admit when I first started out with her novels I thought they lacked some ... oomph? Not a tremendous amount 'happens' but it does so in rather beautiful ways.
While Summerwater is my favourite of her novels so far, The Fell is impressive. It manages to pull off a meditation on the experience of "lockdown" without dragging in politics or even mentioning that dang virus. It's a character study really but as with many of Moss's novels, it's closely linked to landscape- in this case, the setting is the Peak District, Nov 2020.
This one will certainly go on my burgeoning shelf of pandemic literature - a little masterpiece in miniature ( take note authors of 700-page beasts, much can be achieved in far fewer pages ).
While Summerwater is my favourite of her novels so far, The Fell is impressive. It manages to pull off a meditation on the experience of "lockdown" without dragging in politics or even mentioning that dang virus. It's a character study really but as with many of Moss's novels, it's closely linked to landscape- in this case, the setting is the Peak District, Nov 2020.
This one will certainly go on my burgeoning shelf of pandemic literature - a little masterpiece in miniature ( take note authors of 700-page beasts, much can be achieved in far fewer pages ).
July 10, 2023
The setting for this book is England's Peak District, which is on my list of places to visit. There are some great descriptions of the scenery. For example, when Kate is climbing the rocks she tells us that "They're easy to climb, mostly, from behind, and then you can sit on the edge with your feet dangling over the air, sip tea from your flask [this reminds me of picnics growing up in England, there was always a flask of tea] and watch the weather pass until you feel almost airborne, part of the sky."
I chuckled wryly at the hope that one day we will emerge from behind our screens, once the Covid pandemic has passed: "They'll get a shock if they ever see her for real again, fatter and paler and more wrinkled than she is on screen." I think Covid changed us all and aged us into the bargain.
I'm at that stage of life where I'm sorting out what's important and want to organize my 'stuff' and set loose any extra baggage. So, the following sentences resonated with me:
"She has to keep the mug [her son] painted ten years ago at one of those paint-your-own-mug places, though it also has an unappealing handle and is never used."
"She can't leave the house and the charity shops can't open and the whole bulimic system of shopping and decluttering is backed up."
And then, there's my favorite tea quote: "And tea, Mum'll be glad to find tea in the pot when she comes in."
Overall, I enjoyed this literary Covid story, however it was hard not to be mad at Kate for wandering off and putting others' lives in danger.
I chuckled wryly at the hope that one day we will emerge from behind our screens, once the Covid pandemic has passed: "They'll get a shock if they ever see her for real again, fatter and paler and more wrinkled than she is on screen." I think Covid changed us all and aged us into the bargain.
I'm at that stage of life where I'm sorting out what's important and want to organize my 'stuff' and set loose any extra baggage. So, the following sentences resonated with me:
"She has to keep the mug [her son] painted ten years ago at one of those paint-your-own-mug places, though it also has an unappealing handle and is never used."
"She can't leave the house and the charity shops can't open and the whole bulimic system of shopping and decluttering is backed up."
And then, there's my favorite tea quote: "And tea, Mum'll be glad to find tea in the pot when she comes in."
Overall, I enjoyed this literary Covid story, however it was hard not to be mad at Kate for wandering off and putting others' lives in danger.
May 20, 2022
This is a lockdown novel, set during the second UK lockdown in November 2020. It is from the point of view of four voices and is set in an English village on the edge of the Peak District. It is told from the point of view of four different voices. There is Kate, a middle-aged single mother who has been in contact with Covid and is in the middle of two weeks of isolation. Matt is her teenage son who is fed up with school online and spends a lot of time gaming:
“Matt and Kate are, what do they call it, self-isolating, one of those horrible new nonsensical phrases, social distancing, whoever came up with that, there’s not much that’s less social than acting as if everyone’s unclean and dangerous, though the problem of course is that they are, or at least some of them are and there’s no way of knowing. Medical distance they should call it, or why not just safe distance?�
Alice is their next door neighbour, an older woman who has recently finished chemotherapy and is clinically vulnerable and isolating. Rob is a mountain rescue volunteer.
This is pretty brief and Moss says she wrote it pretty quickly. I suspect there will be a plethora of lockdown novels to come, who knows even a canon of lockdown novels! The build-up is slow and understated and Moss makes some use of stream of consciousness. The main premise of the novel is that Kate gets fed up with isolation and goes for a walk on the fells:
“She won’t be long, really she won’t, only a sip of outside, fast up the lane and over the fields, just a little way up the stone path for a quick greeting to the fells.�
She falls and breaks a leg and is stranded on the moors as night falls. There is another voice on the moors, a Raven. We are not in Poe territory here, as one reviewer has pointed out, it’s more the blasted heath of Lear and the Raven makes a good Fool. There is a gothic edge to the second half:
“Maybe she’ll die without ever touching another human, maybe she’s had her last hug, handshake, air-kiss.�
Moss does capture something of the feel of lockdown and isolation, the oddness and isolation and its intensity:
“Dust we are and to dust we shall return, well get on with it then, wouldn’t it be better sometimes just to do the returning than spend your life cowering away, weeks and months ticking by like this, not as if there weren’t epidemics then too, the original inhabitants, but they got on with it, didn’t they, people died and they were sad but they didn’t wall themselves up, they didn’t stop educating the children and forbid music, the living were allowed to live if you can call it that, Victorian mining, not that they lived long but maybe length isn’t how you want to measure it.�
Moss picks apart some of the language of the pandemic and this becomes a reflection on the human condition and indeed on the tension between individual freedom and collective responsibility. There are reflections on the current environmental issues and as Kate says to the Raven:
"One of the things we're learning, we of the end times, is that humanity's ending appears to be slow, lacking in cliffhangers or indeed any satisfactory narrative shape."
This is well written and the wholes does work, it will no doubt be part of the pandemic canon one day. Don’t let that put you off, it’s good.
“Matt and Kate are, what do they call it, self-isolating, one of those horrible new nonsensical phrases, social distancing, whoever came up with that, there’s not much that’s less social than acting as if everyone’s unclean and dangerous, though the problem of course is that they are, or at least some of them are and there’s no way of knowing. Medical distance they should call it, or why not just safe distance?�
Alice is their next door neighbour, an older woman who has recently finished chemotherapy and is clinically vulnerable and isolating. Rob is a mountain rescue volunteer.
This is pretty brief and Moss says she wrote it pretty quickly. I suspect there will be a plethora of lockdown novels to come, who knows even a canon of lockdown novels! The build-up is slow and understated and Moss makes some use of stream of consciousness. The main premise of the novel is that Kate gets fed up with isolation and goes for a walk on the fells:
“She won’t be long, really she won’t, only a sip of outside, fast up the lane and over the fields, just a little way up the stone path for a quick greeting to the fells.�
She falls and breaks a leg and is stranded on the moors as night falls. There is another voice on the moors, a Raven. We are not in Poe territory here, as one reviewer has pointed out, it’s more the blasted heath of Lear and the Raven makes a good Fool. There is a gothic edge to the second half:
“Maybe she’ll die without ever touching another human, maybe she’s had her last hug, handshake, air-kiss.�
Moss does capture something of the feel of lockdown and isolation, the oddness and isolation and its intensity:
“Dust we are and to dust we shall return, well get on with it then, wouldn’t it be better sometimes just to do the returning than spend your life cowering away, weeks and months ticking by like this, not as if there weren’t epidemics then too, the original inhabitants, but they got on with it, didn’t they, people died and they were sad but they didn’t wall themselves up, they didn’t stop educating the children and forbid music, the living were allowed to live if you can call it that, Victorian mining, not that they lived long but maybe length isn’t how you want to measure it.�
Moss picks apart some of the language of the pandemic and this becomes a reflection on the human condition and indeed on the tension between individual freedom and collective responsibility. There are reflections on the current environmental issues and as Kate says to the Raven:
"One of the things we're learning, we of the end times, is that humanity's ending appears to be slow, lacking in cliffhangers or indeed any satisfactory narrative shape."
This is well written and the wholes does work, it will no doubt be part of the pandemic canon one day. Don’t let that put you off, it’s good.
November 1, 2021
Kate is out and moving, going somewhere, the hill rising under her feet and the sky ahead of her. Wind in the trees and her body working at last, climbing, muscle and bone doing what they’re made for. She won’t be long, really she won’t, only a sip of outside, fast up the lane and over the fields, just a little way up the stone path for a quick greeting to the fells.
wonderfully captures the reality of our recent pandemic lockdowns � this isn’t metaphorical or an imagining of how some fictional pandemic might play out � this is the essence of November 2020. Set in England’s Peak District (in view of the orange glow of Manchester but the details are so relatable to this Canadian), as yet another stay-at-home order pits the essential workers against the furloughed, the rule-followers against the scofflaws, frazzled parents against bored children, one woman decides that she’s had enough. Although only on day eight of a two week quarantine (single mother Kate and her teenaged son, Matt, don’t have symptoms but they’ve apparently been exposed to someone with COVID), Kate is fed up with being locked down. Used to a daily ramble on the nearby fells, Kate grabs her rucksack as the day is waning � convinced she won’t meet anyone as the sky starts to drizzle, she doesn’t intend to be out long and doesn’t even say goodbye to her son � but when Matt realises she’s missing and the night turns dark and cold, he’s uncertain where to turn for help: Do you call the police when your Mom is breaking the law and risking a huge fine? As employed so well in , author Sarah Moss uses rotating POVs to look at the pandemic (in this case, from four different perspectives; all believably real characters having varied experiences), but this is mostly Kate’s story, and as it unspools, we realise that it’s her fragile mental health that’s forcing her to act out. This is a short read � under 200 pages � so while it could have gone into more depth, it’s hardly shallow. Rounding up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I know, she said, I’m making a fuss, I just find this really hard, I knew I would . Not, he thought, as hard as getting sick, not as hard as Deepak’s dad who was in Intensive Care for three weeks or the grandparents of kids in his class who’ve died this year or his Maths teacher who’s back at work but can’t get enough breath for a sentence half the time, compared to that doing the garden instead of going up the fells is actually quite manageable, so how about he games and she does yoga in the garden and they hope neither of them starts with the fever and loss of taste and smell.
The lockdowns feel like a different world to me now, and like Kate’s neighbour, Alice (a retired widow whose recent battle with cancer labels her vulnerable; although comfortable and secure, she resents that her life has been narrowed to delivered groceries and meals with her family over videocall), I might find it hard to pinpoint what’s so terrible about being told to stay inside my cozy home, but it felt lousy nonetheless. Between all four of the characters featured, many of the common lockdown experiences were noted, and as for Kate, hers proves to be a story of what happens when the strain of the lockdowns is experienced by the mentally vulnerable:
She wishes sometimes you could just sign a disclaimer, like a Do Not Resuscitate order, promising that if you get sick you won’t go to hospital, won’t make any demands or expect any help, and in exchange you could take your own risks, decide how much you want to stay alive and at what cost to your sanity, but of course that’s not how it works, it’s not that the government care if you feel ill or die cheaply at home, it’s that they care if you pass the illness to people who will die expensively in hospital so it’s no use individuals trying to opt out, we’re biologically connected to each other and anyway that’s not how society works, she knows that, you can’t sign out of community and it’s not that she’d usually want to. She doesn’t disapprove of lockdown or masks or any of it, not on principle, only the longer this goes on the less she objects to dying and the harder it is to understand why other people don’t feel the same way.
One of the things I liked best about Summerwater were the various bits from the POV of animals and nature at large (a technique I also really liked in Jon McGregor’s ; coincidentally also about a person gone missing while on a hike in the Peak District), and while Kate does hallucinate a conversation with a raven, the following was definitely to my tastes:
The raven flies down the valley. It’s hours yet, till sunrise. Sheep rest where their seed, breed and generation have worn hollows in the peat, lay their dreaming heads where past sheep have lain theirs. The lovely hares sleep where the long grass folds over them. No burrows, no burial. The Saukin Stone dries in the wind. Though the stone’s feet are planted deep in the rivulets, in the bodies of trees a thousand years dead, its face takes the weather, gazes eyeless over heather and bog. Roots reach deep, bide their time. Spring will come.
Ultimately: Yes, we’ve all been in this together, but we’re not all experiencing the pressures in the same way. Is a ramble in the fells the most selfish of acts if one’s mental health demands it? The Fell captures the essence of this question, and so much more about life in the pandemic, and it has the feeling of a durable artefact. Lovely little read that gives much to ponder on.
October 9, 2021
How much is the fine, anyway, though however much it is she can’t afford it and she’d rather have an untreated fracture than risk prison, even more stupid to end up in prison because you couldn’t bear being locked up at home than to go get yourself into trouble on the fells when you should know better.
Sarah Moss's The Fell is the first novel I have read that accurately and piercingly captures the lived experience of Autumn 2021 in England and the second lockdown, emphasising both the alterity of the world in which we found ourselves living, and its banal nature:
Hope rises for a moment, that he can maybe at least make a toastie and put some music on, not that he can’t do those things when she’s around but he could do them better, more peacefully, if she’s out, though of course she can’t be out, not even for a walk, not for another six days, seven hours and twenty minutes. Give or take. The fourteen days, he heard her ask on the phone, what time does it end, is it noon or midnight or from when I last saw my colleague, which would have been about five o’clock on Thursday?
Stylistically, I enjoyed the writing which, if not quite stream of consciousness, focuses on the characters' thoughts more than their actions.
As with Ghost Wall this is a commendably brief novel, although as with that book it feels this could have been slimmer still, with the second half rather lacking the impact of the first, which perhaps points to one issue I had personally: that the mountain rescue story itself didn't really grab me.
And in part this may be because the characters in the novel felt like types more than people (and they know it: she’s becoming a grumpy old woman, that’s what, she’s even boring herself, it’s going to be avocados she’s complaining about next).
Overall 3.5 stars
Sarah Moss's The Fell is the first novel I have read that accurately and piercingly captures the lived experience of Autumn 2021 in England and the second lockdown, emphasising both the alterity of the world in which we found ourselves living, and its banal nature:
Hope rises for a moment, that he can maybe at least make a toastie and put some music on, not that he can’t do those things when she’s around but he could do them better, more peacefully, if she’s out, though of course she can’t be out, not even for a walk, not for another six days, seven hours and twenty minutes. Give or take. The fourteen days, he heard her ask on the phone, what time does it end, is it noon or midnight or from when I last saw my colleague, which would have been about five o’clock on Thursday?
Stylistically, I enjoyed the writing which, if not quite stream of consciousness, focuses on the characters' thoughts more than their actions.
As with Ghost Wall this is a commendably brief novel, although as with that book it feels this could have been slimmer still, with the second half rather lacking the impact of the first, which perhaps points to one issue I had personally: that the mountain rescue story itself didn't really grab me.
And in part this may be because the characters in the novel felt like types more than people (and they know it: she’s becoming a grumpy old woman, that’s what, she’s even boring herself, it’s going to be avocados she’s complaining about next).
Overall 3.5 stars
September 3, 2021
4.5, rounded down.
I ended 2020 and began 2021 reading Moss's entire canon back to back - to say I enjoy her writing immensely is an understatement. Her newest novel (or perhaps, at 160 pages, novella?), does not disappoint, and seems to be in the first flux of books directly addressing the current pandemic and quarantine. Like her previous masterwork, , the book takes place within a single day, and bounces amongst the perspectives of several different characters. Here, her canvas is much smaller than the dozen plus narrators of that book, encompassing just 4 main protagonists.
As always Moss's prose is an absolute pleasure to read, flowing effortlessly, with hidden depths and boundless humanity. Perhaps the only quibble is that it is maybe TOO short, which somehow makes it seem a slighter endeavor - I wanted more than just a few brief hours in the company of Moss's characters and writing.
I ended 2020 and began 2021 reading Moss's entire canon back to back - to say I enjoy her writing immensely is an understatement. Her newest novel (or perhaps, at 160 pages, novella?), does not disappoint, and seems to be in the first flux of books directly addressing the current pandemic and quarantine. Like her previous masterwork, , the book takes place within a single day, and bounces amongst the perspectives of several different characters. Here, her canvas is much smaller than the dozen plus narrators of that book, encompassing just 4 main protagonists.
As always Moss's prose is an absolute pleasure to read, flowing effortlessly, with hidden depths and boundless humanity. Perhaps the only quibble is that it is maybe TOO short, which somehow makes it seem a slighter endeavor - I wanted more than just a few brief hours in the company of Moss's characters and writing.
February 13, 2022
This is the third novel by Sarah Moss that I read and she's yet to disappoint.
The Fell is a short novel that takes place in Northern England, in November 2020, when the pandemic was in a full-blown mode in the UK. It all takes place over one day. Told via four PoVs, we hear the characters' stories and how they're dealing and coping with the pandemic and the rules imposed by the government - staying put, not congregating with others, social distancing and curfews.
The narratives belong to forty-year-old, single mother Kate, her teenage son, Tom, their widowed older neighbour, Alice, and Rob, a divorced volunteer mountain rescuer.
When Kate takes off on a walk on the mountain, a search and rescue team is sent to try to locate her.
Will she be found dead or alive?
It'll be impossible not to relate or understand the characters in this novel - there's the person already struggling with depression, financial insecurities, the morose teenage boy, gaming and just surviving, the lonely, kind, elderly neighbour, a widow and a cancer survivor who knows she's financially privileged, but that doesn't count for much when she's desperately lonely.
This is the kind of book that captures a moment in time rather than invent or embellish.
It's not for everyone, I'm glad I read it or listen in this case.
The Fell is a short novel that takes place in Northern England, in November 2020, when the pandemic was in a full-blown mode in the UK. It all takes place over one day. Told via four PoVs, we hear the characters' stories and how they're dealing and coping with the pandemic and the rules imposed by the government - staying put, not congregating with others, social distancing and curfews.
The narratives belong to forty-year-old, single mother Kate, her teenage son, Tom, their widowed older neighbour, Alice, and Rob, a divorced volunteer mountain rescuer.
When Kate takes off on a walk on the mountain, a search and rescue team is sent to try to locate her.
Will she be found dead or alive?
It'll be impossible not to relate or understand the characters in this novel - there's the person already struggling with depression, financial insecurities, the morose teenage boy, gaming and just surviving, the lonely, kind, elderly neighbour, a widow and a cancer survivor who knows she's financially privileged, but that doesn't count for much when she's desperately lonely.
This is the kind of book that captures a moment in time rather than invent or embellish.
It's not for everyone, I'm glad I read it or listen in this case.
November 30, 2024
It has already been written abundantly: this is the first real covid novel. The setting Sarah Moss has chosen is modest: a neighborhood in the Peak District, UK, November 2020, at the height of the panic about the epidemic, when everyone was in mandatory quarantine. Through protagonist Kate and three other voices, she illustrates how the disease also eats away psychologically at people who are already in a weak position (in Kate's case as a single mother of an adolescent son, having lost her job due to the epidemic). We are in the minds of the characters all the time, through the interior monologue technique, with which Moss highlights the vulnerability of the characters. Not badly done, but I didn't really felt connected. It's strange, but in 2024 covid seems like something from a very distant past, without too many consequences. But appearances may be deceiving? Rating 2.5 stars.
December 24, 2021
Short version: one day, three families in COVID epidemic. Kate and her son are in forced lockdown. Alice is a widow and recovering from cancer. Rob is a mountain rescuer with his daughter at the weekend.
I didn't read Sarah Moss before, really did like to read this book. About the first 30 pages, I was going to drop it off. The writing style was encouraging so, I thought it's a short book let's finish it. I'm happy did that and I'm going to read more from this author.
Yes at first, there were so many grump and fuss about limitations. I know it's hard and has a serious of consequences, but really? So bad you compare with world wars?! The only thing we have to do is stay at home, Okay it's our home, is it so awful? I'm not going to judge but this was too much.
As the story goes on, every character could be better known. Alice became my favorite character. She was eating all cookies while she had cancer, bad choice and very gave me stress. But then I began to realize. This was the magic of this book, of this story I really don't like the contents, you really can understand characters. It's true right, you can not always take the sane logical right decisions, can you?
"Self-isolating, one of those horrible new nonsensical phrases. Social distancing, Medical distance, they should call it, or why not just safe distance, and when did ‘distance� become a verb?"
Kate, an unhappy one, who couldn't stay in a place, if see her from the good side, an outdoor person. She is a single mum and really cares about her teenage son. In the beginning, she was just looking irresponsible. You see, with some patience, characters reveal themselves and this was beautiful.
"She doesn’t even want to remember singing in pubs, how can that ever happen again, the singing or the pubs let alone both.
... Though at least there were dances in the war, weren’t there, and concerts, and sex, lots of sex, at least people were allowed to see each other."
This is a book about three families in the pandemic. How life changes forever, how almost everybody struggles to keep their incomes, try to deal with children, worried about prices, and all that. A 4-star book, a little sad and dark for me.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for giving me a chance to read The Fell by Sarah Moss, I have given my honest review.
Pub Date: 01 Mar 2022
Review Date: 29 Nov 2021
I didn't read Sarah Moss before, really did like to read this book. About the first 30 pages, I was going to drop it off. The writing style was encouraging so, I thought it's a short book let's finish it. I'm happy did that and I'm going to read more from this author.
Yes at first, there were so many grump and fuss about limitations. I know it's hard and has a serious of consequences, but really? So bad you compare with world wars?! The only thing we have to do is stay at home, Okay it's our home, is it so awful? I'm not going to judge but this was too much.
As the story goes on, every character could be better known. Alice became my favorite character. She was eating all cookies while she had cancer, bad choice and very gave me stress. But then I began to realize. This was the magic of this book, of this story I really don't like the contents, you really can understand characters. It's true right, you can not always take the sane logical right decisions, can you?
"Self-isolating, one of those horrible new nonsensical phrases. Social distancing, Medical distance, they should call it, or why not just safe distance, and when did ‘distance� become a verb?"
Kate, an unhappy one, who couldn't stay in a place, if see her from the good side, an outdoor person. She is a single mum and really cares about her teenage son. In the beginning, she was just looking irresponsible. You see, with some patience, characters reveal themselves and this was beautiful.
"She doesn’t even want to remember singing in pubs, how can that ever happen again, the singing or the pubs let alone both.
... Though at least there were dances in the war, weren’t there, and concerts, and sex, lots of sex, at least people were allowed to see each other."
This is a book about three families in the pandemic. How life changes forever, how almost everybody struggles to keep their incomes, try to deal with children, worried about prices, and all that. A 4-star book, a little sad and dark for me.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for giving me a chance to read The Fell by Sarah Moss, I have given my honest review.
Pub Date: 01 Mar 2022
Review Date: 29 Nov 2021
March 10, 2022
4.5*
is a thought-provoking and evocative read, exploring as it does themes around isolation, anxiety and compliance during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The book is set during a single 24-hour period in November 2020, in Derbyshire's Peak District. Britain is experiencing a surge in cases of the SARS-CoV-2 / Covid-19 virus (although the virus itself is never named in the book) and is in the midst of social restrictions. Through four separate narrative voices, we follow the protagonists as they experience the frustrations, self-reflections and temptations that will be familiar to anyone who has been locked down for any period over the past two years (and that's most of us!). By its nature, it's an introspective piece, which flows fairly languidly to its defining moment, then becomes more plot-based for the second half, rolling towards a reflective conclusion.
Struggling middle-aged café worker Kate has been furloughed from work and is presently sitting out a two week period of home isolation, after a close contact has tested positive. She's a personality who thrives in nature and is experiencing increasing levels of psychological distress at her confinement as the days roll on. Her 16-year-old son, Matt, is also cooped up in their small moor-side cottage, amusing himself with online gaming and eating copious amounts of food. Neighbour Alice is also enduring isolation, self-imposed in her case, as she has recently undergone treatment for cancer and is thus at higher risk of poor outcomes, should she catch the virus.
In a moment of weakness one evening, Kate makes the decision to leave her home and take a brief walk up the nearby fell*, hoping that it will restore her to a more balanced frame of mind. She rationalises her breach of isolation on the basis that there are few, if any, other people to meet or be seen by and that she'll most likely be back in the house before Matt has realised she's gone. Alice sees Kate walking towards the Fell, considers cautioning her against it, but ultimately decides to turn a blind eye.
*a high and barren landscape feature, such as a mountain or moor-covered hill.
Unfortunately, Kate's "harmless" stroll on the fell takes an unexpected turn when she ventures further than intended, falls and injures herself as night and bad weather descend. Without her mobile phone, Kate is in real danger, particularly as she has told nobody where she was going. At home, Matt becomes increasingly more concerned about his mother's whereabouts, conferring at a distance with Alice and wrestling with the competing pressures of ensuring his mother's safety, while not exposing her to the risk of a large fine she can ill afford to pay.
The fourth narrator joins the story at around the mid-point. Rob is a mountain rescue volunteer and must sacrifice a rare evening with his teenaged daughter when he receives the call-out to search for Kate in the National Park. Nevertheless, Rob knows where his priorities must lie, especially now with the ranks of on-call rescuers depleted by lock-downs and illness.
I found a nuanced and thoughtful read, capturing many of the human emotions and preoccupations that the experience of living through a pandemic has raised. I certainly never had the impression, as some other reviewers have voiced, that the book is advocating an "anti-vax" or non-compliant position. Instead, I feel that is espousing values of understanding, kindness and pulling together in adversity. Some personalities will inevitably find periods of isolation and containment more psychologically challenging than others, and many readers will have experienced the temptation to "bend the rules" a little as a managed risk over the course of the pandemic. Most of those occasions have presumably been relatively harmless, but it's in the nature of human experience for things to sometimes go awry - how would we ourselves deal with such a situation?
is a timely reflection on the human condition when subjected to unfamiliar stressors. I'd recommend it to any reader who enjoys quality literary and/or contemporary fiction, and those with a particular interest in the way individuals have experienced and responded to the worldwide pandemic.
My thanks to the author, , publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this enthralling title.
is a thought-provoking and evocative read, exploring as it does themes around isolation, anxiety and compliance during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The book is set during a single 24-hour period in November 2020, in Derbyshire's Peak District. Britain is experiencing a surge in cases of the SARS-CoV-2 / Covid-19 virus (although the virus itself is never named in the book) and is in the midst of social restrictions. Through four separate narrative voices, we follow the protagonists as they experience the frustrations, self-reflections and temptations that will be familiar to anyone who has been locked down for any period over the past two years (and that's most of us!). By its nature, it's an introspective piece, which flows fairly languidly to its defining moment, then becomes more plot-based for the second half, rolling towards a reflective conclusion.
Struggling middle-aged café worker Kate has been furloughed from work and is presently sitting out a two week period of home isolation, after a close contact has tested positive. She's a personality who thrives in nature and is experiencing increasing levels of psychological distress at her confinement as the days roll on. Her 16-year-old son, Matt, is also cooped up in their small moor-side cottage, amusing himself with online gaming and eating copious amounts of food. Neighbour Alice is also enduring isolation, self-imposed in her case, as she has recently undergone treatment for cancer and is thus at higher risk of poor outcomes, should she catch the virus.
In a moment of weakness one evening, Kate makes the decision to leave her home and take a brief walk up the nearby fell*, hoping that it will restore her to a more balanced frame of mind. She rationalises her breach of isolation on the basis that there are few, if any, other people to meet or be seen by and that she'll most likely be back in the house before Matt has realised she's gone. Alice sees Kate walking towards the Fell, considers cautioning her against it, but ultimately decides to turn a blind eye.
*a high and barren landscape feature, such as a mountain or moor-covered hill.
Unfortunately, Kate's "harmless" stroll on the fell takes an unexpected turn when she ventures further than intended, falls and injures herself as night and bad weather descend. Without her mobile phone, Kate is in real danger, particularly as she has told nobody where she was going. At home, Matt becomes increasingly more concerned about his mother's whereabouts, conferring at a distance with Alice and wrestling with the competing pressures of ensuring his mother's safety, while not exposing her to the risk of a large fine she can ill afford to pay.
The fourth narrator joins the story at around the mid-point. Rob is a mountain rescue volunteer and must sacrifice a rare evening with his teenaged daughter when he receives the call-out to search for Kate in the National Park. Nevertheless, Rob knows where his priorities must lie, especially now with the ranks of on-call rescuers depleted by lock-downs and illness.
I found a nuanced and thoughtful read, capturing many of the human emotions and preoccupations that the experience of living through a pandemic has raised. I certainly never had the impression, as some other reviewers have voiced, that the book is advocating an "anti-vax" or non-compliant position. Instead, I feel that is espousing values of understanding, kindness and pulling together in adversity. Some personalities will inevitably find periods of isolation and containment more psychologically challenging than others, and many readers will have experienced the temptation to "bend the rules" a little as a managed risk over the course of the pandemic. Most of those occasions have presumably been relatively harmless, but it's in the nature of human experience for things to sometimes go awry - how would we ourselves deal with such a situation?
is a timely reflection on the human condition when subjected to unfamiliar stressors. I'd recommend it to any reader who enjoys quality literary and/or contemporary fiction, and those with a particular interest in the way individuals have experienced and responded to the worldwide pandemic.
My thanks to the author, , publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this enthralling title.
August 26, 2021
Another impressively stark ruminative impression of England in crisis, with that same deceptively-simple style both Moss and Ali Smith seem to wield against national backsliding better than anyone else.
Thank you to Net Galley for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to Net Galley for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
February 11, 2022
I've been left sorely disappointed by the early crop of Covid novels, including Sarah Hall's Burntcoat, and it would be sacrilege to even mention the existence of Gary Shteyngart's painfully unfunny satire Our Country Friends in the same paragraph as earnest, good-faith literary efforts like this one.
[clears throat for paragraph break]
So I'm just going to review The Fell as the third of Sarah Moss's shortish novels I've read in the past two years. This seemed much slighter, compared to either Ghost Wall or Summerwater. She's working with a narrower canvas here: entering into four streams of consciousness over a 24-hour period in a Peak District village during the winter lockdown of 2020-21. But there's a drudge-y sameness to these subjectivities: Kate, a 40ish quarantine breaker, single parent, and furloughed cafe waitress with possible Covid exposure; Alice, her wealthy retired neighbor; Matt, her gaming-addicted teenage son (whose voice just fell flat on the page); and Rob, a volunteer from the local mountain rescue team with his own messed-up family life.
Perhaps Moss was just dramatizing the horrible endless kitchen-sink drudgery and banality of those days spent cooking, housecleaning, and online, but while I could personally relate to surviving months of Groundhog Days, I didn't want to relive them, and these characters' experiences with loneliness and isolation just felt flat and banal to me.
In real life, I would have immediately leapt to sanctimonious judgment about brazen breakers of the Covid rules who thoughtlessly inflict their virality upon the old, infirm, and immunosuppressed, in radical denial of the common good. But I will admit found some measure of empathy for Kate, a vegetarian hippie who doesn't fit the profile of the right-wing anti-masker next door.
Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sharing an ARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
[clears throat for paragraph break]
So I'm just going to review The Fell as the third of Sarah Moss's shortish novels I've read in the past two years. This seemed much slighter, compared to either Ghost Wall or Summerwater. She's working with a narrower canvas here: entering into four streams of consciousness over a 24-hour period in a Peak District village during the winter lockdown of 2020-21. But there's a drudge-y sameness to these subjectivities: Kate, a 40ish quarantine breaker, single parent, and furloughed cafe waitress with possible Covid exposure; Alice, her wealthy retired neighbor; Matt, her gaming-addicted teenage son (whose voice just fell flat on the page); and Rob, a volunteer from the local mountain rescue team with his own messed-up family life.
Perhaps Moss was just dramatizing the horrible endless kitchen-sink drudgery and banality of those days spent cooking, housecleaning, and online, but while I could personally relate to surviving months of Groundhog Days, I didn't want to relive them, and these characters' experiences with loneliness and isolation just felt flat and banal to me.
In real life, I would have immediately leapt to sanctimonious judgment about brazen breakers of the Covid rules who thoughtlessly inflict their virality upon the old, infirm, and immunosuppressed, in radical denial of the common good. But I will admit found some measure of empathy for Kate, a vegetarian hippie who doesn't fit the profile of the right-wing anti-masker next door.
Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sharing an ARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
October 15, 2021
Like Moss’s previous book, Summerwater, The Fell takes place over a single day. The book blurb gives the basic set up, so it isn’t a spoiler to say that Kate and her son are self-isolating (during the UK’s November 2020 lockdown, I think) and it all gets too much for Kate who decides to go for a walk, which is technically illegal, but she isn’t going to see anyone so it can’t do any harm, right? Matt is her son who shares a house with her and suddenly realises she isn’t there any longer. Alice is their next door neighbour. These are three of the main characters in the book. The other is Rob who is there on the first page and is part of the mountain rescue team that the book blurb perhaps unhelpfully tells us about. I think I might have wanted to discover the basic plot line of the book for myself, but I guess it might be that the focus of the book is very much not the plot but more the reactions and emotions of these four characters as the plot unfolds.
The narrative moves from one main character to another in a series of almost “stream of consciousness� chapters where we listen in to the thoughts of that chapter’s character. The voices of each character are clearly distinct and you can open the book at random and know from the style exactly whose thoughts you are listening to on that page.
This is a COVID book and it does an excellent job of capturing a time and a place. Anyone who lived in England during the November 2020 lockdown will recognise the setting with people’s movements limited, fines for going out when you shouldn’t, fears about picking up COVID from your grocery delivery, the NHS making priority calls about who to help that are necessarily short term and might have long term consequences for the nation’s mental health as well as physical etc.. In many ways, the book feels like a time capsule that has recorded that period and allows us now to look back on it. Although I am not 100% sure why we would want to do that as it really wasn’t a lot of fun.
My favourite character in the book is Alice and I found her chapters the most engaging (despite the drama experienced by Kate). Alice’s chapters really capture well what it felt like to be in lockdown. The weakest chapters for me were those voiced by Matt, although his central dilemma about whether to call for help because that would draw attention to the fact that his mother had broken the law and might mean they lose the house or are separated as a family unit was, for me, the highlight of the book. Kate’s and Rob’s chapters are interesting for Kate’s imagined conversation with a raven and for Rob’s internal battle where rescuing people contends with family responsibilities.
I recently read Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat. Where Moss has written a book based on COVID, Hall wrote a book inspired by COVID. And I think different people will react in different ways to the two different approaches. For some, what Moss has done here will capture a time and a place brilliantly and be an effective way to engaged with the pandemic. Others, including me, will respond better to Hall’s imaginative abstraction of COVID. That said, this is probably my favourite of the three Sarah Moss novels I have read (the other two being Ghost Wall and Summerwater). They are all good books but this one just has the edge for me.
The narrative moves from one main character to another in a series of almost “stream of consciousness� chapters where we listen in to the thoughts of that chapter’s character. The voices of each character are clearly distinct and you can open the book at random and know from the style exactly whose thoughts you are listening to on that page.
This is a COVID book and it does an excellent job of capturing a time and a place. Anyone who lived in England during the November 2020 lockdown will recognise the setting with people’s movements limited, fines for going out when you shouldn’t, fears about picking up COVID from your grocery delivery, the NHS making priority calls about who to help that are necessarily short term and might have long term consequences for the nation’s mental health as well as physical etc.. In many ways, the book feels like a time capsule that has recorded that period and allows us now to look back on it. Although I am not 100% sure why we would want to do that as it really wasn’t a lot of fun.
My favourite character in the book is Alice and I found her chapters the most engaging (despite the drama experienced by Kate). Alice’s chapters really capture well what it felt like to be in lockdown. The weakest chapters for me were those voiced by Matt, although his central dilemma about whether to call for help because that would draw attention to the fact that his mother had broken the law and might mean they lose the house or are separated as a family unit was, for me, the highlight of the book. Kate’s and Rob’s chapters are interesting for Kate’s imagined conversation with a raven and for Rob’s internal battle where rescuing people contends with family responsibilities.
I recently read Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat. Where Moss has written a book based on COVID, Hall wrote a book inspired by COVID. And I think different people will react in different ways to the two different approaches. For some, what Moss has done here will capture a time and a place brilliantly and be an effective way to engaged with the pandemic. Others, including me, will respond better to Hall’s imaginative abstraction of COVID. That said, this is probably my favourite of the three Sarah Moss novels I have read (the other two being Ghost Wall and Summerwater). They are all good books but this one just has the edge for me.
January 12, 2022
I received this book from Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review.
I found it difficult to write a review for this book mainly because it was by far the most irritating book I read in 2021.
Ostensibly, this is a book about the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.
In truth the Covid-19 aspect is mostly a McGuffin, clickbait, to draw attention to a story about a selfish woman acting self-indulgently and thus endangering kind strangers and causing her family and friends much worry.
The story centres on Kate who seems to be almost completely inept at coping with the day-to-day requirements of life. She lives in a badly maintained cottage with her son who, rather than bringing her comfort, she sees as just another burden: eating too much food and creating too much housework.
The only parts of her life she enjoys are her job, which provides her with social interaction and some extra food, and the wild beauty of the Peak District, the area where she lives.
And now she is required to isolate for two weeks, deprived of the socialization of her job and hikes in the Peak District.
While I could have some sympathy with her frustration this is not the story of someone isolating in an airless apartment in a dreary city, or someone trapped in lockdown with stressing-inducing or abusive family members. She is lucky enough to live in a cottage in the country with a garden.
A second point of view is that of her son Matt, a relatively passive teenager, who spends his time in his room gaming or pondering on his relationship with his best friend. I would have liked to hear more from Matt but his contribution is minor and mainly involves worrying what has happened to his mum.
We also have the point of view of the elderly neighbor Alice who is sheltering at home due to the fact she is recovering from cancer. Her POV is the most Covid-relevant narrative. She muses on the restrictions and difficulties, the problems big and small, and her rather unsatisfactory relationship with her daughter’s family.
The fourth perspective is that of one of the volunteer rescuers who must leave his disgruntled teen daughter at home in order to assist in the search for Kate.
Although he is unexpectedly on-call due to a Covid- related shortage of available volunteers he is happy to be tramping around on fells and tors and enjoys the excuse his volunteer work gives him to wander freely outside even during lockdown.
Incredibly, the author seemed to be implying that his ‘selfish� pleasure derived from his volunteer work in some way equates his actions with those of Kate!
I was not as impressed as others by the writing style but was quite good even though I tend to dislike stream of consciousness. However, it was not good enough to elevate my opinion of this book.
2.5 stars
I found it difficult to write a review for this book mainly because it was by far the most irritating book I read in 2021.
Ostensibly, this is a book about the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.
In truth the Covid-19 aspect is mostly a McGuffin, clickbait, to draw attention to a story about a selfish woman acting self-indulgently and thus endangering kind strangers and causing her family and friends much worry.
The story centres on Kate who seems to be almost completely inept at coping with the day-to-day requirements of life. She lives in a badly maintained cottage with her son who, rather than bringing her comfort, she sees as just another burden: eating too much food and creating too much housework.
The only parts of her life she enjoys are her job, which provides her with social interaction and some extra food, and the wild beauty of the Peak District, the area where she lives.
And now she is required to isolate for two weeks, deprived of the socialization of her job and hikes in the Peak District.
While I could have some sympathy with her frustration this is not the story of someone isolating in an airless apartment in a dreary city, or someone trapped in lockdown with stressing-inducing or abusive family members. She is lucky enough to live in a cottage in the country with a garden.
A second point of view is that of her son Matt, a relatively passive teenager, who spends his time in his room gaming or pondering on his relationship with his best friend. I would have liked to hear more from Matt but his contribution is minor and mainly involves worrying what has happened to his mum.
We also have the point of view of the elderly neighbor Alice who is sheltering at home due to the fact she is recovering from cancer. Her POV is the most Covid-relevant narrative. She muses on the restrictions and difficulties, the problems big and small, and her rather unsatisfactory relationship with her daughter’s family.
The fourth perspective is that of one of the volunteer rescuers who must leave his disgruntled teen daughter at home in order to assist in the search for Kate.
Although he is unexpectedly on-call due to a Covid- related shortage of available volunteers he is happy to be tramping around on fells and tors and enjoys the excuse his volunteer work gives him to wander freely outside even during lockdown.
Incredibly, the author seemed to be implying that his ‘selfish� pleasure derived from his volunteer work in some way equates his actions with those of Kate!
I was not as impressed as others by the writing style but was quite good even though I tend to dislike stream of consciousness. However, it was not good enough to elevate my opinion of this book.
2.5 stars
March 12, 2022
This is my favorite by this author so far, featuring four people during the pandemic, trying to deal with the isolation. The style feels like if Lucy Ellmann () wrote (Jon McGregor.)
I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. They were brave to grant me access since I wasn't sure I'd like it! It came out March 1, 2022.
I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. They were brave to grant me access since I wasn't sure I'd like it! It came out March 1, 2022.
July 23, 2024
A story set in the beautiful Peak District, during the Autumn/Winter COVID lockdown of 2020. It's told from four points of view over the course of one day, and focuses mainly on the characters thoughts, almost in a stream of consciousness.
Sarah Moss is very good at this style of writing, it really does feel like being in someone's head, however for me, the circular and repetitive nature of a person's thoughts can get pretty exhausting after a while. It's a quick read though, at 184 pages and I enjoyed it for the most part, 3 stars.
Sarah Moss is very good at this style of writing, it really does feel like being in someone's head, however for me, the circular and repetitive nature of a person's thoughts can get pretty exhausting after a while. It's a quick read though, at 184 pages and I enjoyed it for the most part, 3 stars.
November 12, 2021
Sarah Moss’s latest three releases have all been of novella length. I reviewed Ghost Wall for Novellas in November in 2018, and Summerwater in August 2020. In this trio, she’s demonstrated a fascination with what happens when people of diverging backgrounds and opinions are thrown together in extreme circumstances. Moss almost stops time as her effortless third-person omniscient narration moves from one character’s head to another. We feel that we know each one’s experiences and motivations from the inside. Whereas Ghost Wall was set in two weeks of a late-1980s summer, Summerwater and now the taut The Fell have pushed that time compression even further, spanning a day and about half a day, respectively.
A circadian narrative holds a lot of appeal � we’re all tantalized, I think, by the potential difference that one day can make. The particular day chosen as the backdrop for The Fell offers an ideal combination of the mundane and the climactic because it was during the UK’s November 2020 lockdown. On top of that blanket restriction, single mum Kate has been exposed to Covid-19 via a café colleague, so she and her teenage son Matt are meant to be in strict two-week quarantine. Except Kate can’t bear to be cooped up one minute longer and, as dusk falls, she sneaks out of their home in the Peak District National Park to climb a nearby hill. She knows this fell like the back of her hand, so doesn’t bother taking her phone.
Over the next 12 hours or so, we dart between four stream-of-consciousness internal monologues: besides Kate and Matt, the two main characters are their neighbour, Alice, an older widow who has undergone cancer treatment; and Rob, part of the volunteer hill rescue crew sent out to find Kate when she fails to return quickly. For the most part � as befits the lockdown � each is stuck in their solitary musings (Kate regrets her marriage, Alice reflects on a bristly relationship with her daughter, Rob remembers a friend who died up a mountain), but there are also a few brief interactions between them. I particularly enjoyed time spent with Kate as she sings religious songs and imagines a raven conducting her inquisition.
What Moss wants to do here, is done well. My misgiving is to do with the recycling of an identical approach from Summerwater � not just the circadian limit, present tense, no speech marks and POV-hopping, but also naming each short chapter after a random phrase from it. Another problem is one of timing. Had this come out last November, or even this January, it might have been close enough to events to be essential. Instead, it seems stuck in a time warp. Early on in the first lockdown, when our local arts venue’s open mic nights had gone online, one participant made a semi-professional music video for a song with the refrain “everyone’s got the same jokes.�
That’s how I reacted to The Fell: baking bread and biscuits, a family catch-up on Zoom, repainting and clearouts, even obsessive hand-washing � the references were worn out well before a draft was finished. Ironic though it may seem, I feel like I’ve found more cogent commentary about our present moment from Moss’s historical work. Yet I’ve read all of her fiction and would still list her among my favourite contemporary writers. Aspiring creative writers could approach the Summerwater/The Fell duology as a masterclass in perspective, voice and concise plotting. But I hope for something new from her next book.
Originally published on my blog, .
A circadian narrative holds a lot of appeal � we’re all tantalized, I think, by the potential difference that one day can make. The particular day chosen as the backdrop for The Fell offers an ideal combination of the mundane and the climactic because it was during the UK’s November 2020 lockdown. On top of that blanket restriction, single mum Kate has been exposed to Covid-19 via a café colleague, so she and her teenage son Matt are meant to be in strict two-week quarantine. Except Kate can’t bear to be cooped up one minute longer and, as dusk falls, she sneaks out of their home in the Peak District National Park to climb a nearby hill. She knows this fell like the back of her hand, so doesn’t bother taking her phone.
Over the next 12 hours or so, we dart between four stream-of-consciousness internal monologues: besides Kate and Matt, the two main characters are their neighbour, Alice, an older widow who has undergone cancer treatment; and Rob, part of the volunteer hill rescue crew sent out to find Kate when she fails to return quickly. For the most part � as befits the lockdown � each is stuck in their solitary musings (Kate regrets her marriage, Alice reflects on a bristly relationship with her daughter, Rob remembers a friend who died up a mountain), but there are also a few brief interactions between them. I particularly enjoyed time spent with Kate as she sings religious songs and imagines a raven conducting her inquisition.
What Moss wants to do here, is done well. My misgiving is to do with the recycling of an identical approach from Summerwater � not just the circadian limit, present tense, no speech marks and POV-hopping, but also naming each short chapter after a random phrase from it. Another problem is one of timing. Had this come out last November, or even this January, it might have been close enough to events to be essential. Instead, it seems stuck in a time warp. Early on in the first lockdown, when our local arts venue’s open mic nights had gone online, one participant made a semi-professional music video for a song with the refrain “everyone’s got the same jokes.�
That’s how I reacted to The Fell: baking bread and biscuits, a family catch-up on Zoom, repainting and clearouts, even obsessive hand-washing � the references were worn out well before a draft was finished. Ironic though it may seem, I feel like I’ve found more cogent commentary about our present moment from Moss’s historical work. Yet I’ve read all of her fiction and would still list her among my favourite contemporary writers. Aspiring creative writers could approach the Summerwater/The Fell duology as a masterclass in perspective, voice and concise plotting. But I hope for something new from her next book.
Originally published on my blog, .
July 5, 2022
This short, somewhat claustrophobic novel might not be for everyone. I had to get used to the stream-of-consciousness style that permeates it--but once I did it developed a rhythm and read easily. Moss rivals Faulkner for loooong sentences. Not everyone is ready to relive the isolation, fear, and full-stop the pandemic brought us, which is the background to this story taking place over one day and night.
But, the focus is less on the pandemic than on the struggles and reflections of four people whose lives intersect over the mishap at the foundation of the plot. In this way, it mirrors much of what took place on a global level as we could no longer go about our routines, when we had limited contact with others, when we had to dig deep to find ways to assess and manage this abrupt change to our worlds. These four heads, reflecting and musing, echoed some of my own during the past two and a half years, as well as many others out there.
I enjoy Moss' writing style, which elevates her story plots for me.
"....always more people breaking the rules and suffering the consequences and expecting help"...."We all bring our troubles on ourselves, we eat and drink the wrong things and spend too long in the sun and risk our lives in cars and swimming pools, we exercise less than we should or play contact sports and ride bicycles and wear out our bones in the gym, we go to bed with the wrong people, trust them with our bodies and our minds and indeed aren't we sometimes the wrong people ourselves? Try paediatrics she thought, or better yet the NICU, but wouldn't that be worse, really, to spend our days witnessing the suffering of innocents?"
But, the focus is less on the pandemic than on the struggles and reflections of four people whose lives intersect over the mishap at the foundation of the plot. In this way, it mirrors much of what took place on a global level as we could no longer go about our routines, when we had limited contact with others, when we had to dig deep to find ways to assess and manage this abrupt change to our worlds. These four heads, reflecting and musing, echoed some of my own during the past two and a half years, as well as many others out there.
I enjoy Moss' writing style, which elevates her story plots for me.
"....always more people breaking the rules and suffering the consequences and expecting help"...."We all bring our troubles on ourselves, we eat and drink the wrong things and spend too long in the sun and risk our lives in cars and swimming pools, we exercise less than we should or play contact sports and ride bicycles and wear out our bones in the gym, we go to bed with the wrong people, trust them with our bodies and our minds and indeed aren't we sometimes the wrong people ourselves? Try paediatrics she thought, or better yet the NICU, but wouldn't that be worse, really, to spend our days witnessing the suffering of innocents?"
August 4, 2022
In style and length, this audionovella is very like the author's , which I vividly remember listening to while out for my hour of walking time during a strict lockdown last year. There are even parallels in subject matter, as both are about people confined indoors, by weather, good sense or law. Where this one is a little different is that there are fewer points of view and there is perhaps slightly more direct speech (but still not very much).
I found myself judging Kate and her lack of resilience at first, but as the story progressed I had to acknowledge that COVID in the UK (this story is set in the Peak District of England) is/was different from COVID where I live, and chose instead to view this story as a reminder that we all experience hardship in different ways. In fact, had I been in the same position, I may well have acted the same way.
Well worth the 4 hours of listening time, and Emma Lowndes' soft northern accent is perfect for the tale.
I found myself judging Kate and her lack of resilience at first, but as the story progressed I had to acknowledge that COVID in the UK (this story is set in the Peak District of England) is/was different from COVID where I live, and chose instead to view this story as a reminder that we all experience hardship in different ways. In fact, had I been in the same position, I may well have acted the same way.
Well worth the 4 hours of listening time, and Emma Lowndes' soft northern accent is perfect for the tale.
January 20, 2022
Sarah Moss has a distinct style, unique. Her three books that I've read employ almost a stream of consciousness, utilizing alternating POVs to fashion her story, and this is her take on the current world under the pandemic. A woman, usually energetic, forced to self quarantine with her teenage son, leaves the house for a much needed (illegal) walk on the hillside, intending to return before he notices. The ensuing hours unfold with increasing tension through the lives of the woman, her son, an elderly neighbor, and a member of a mountain rescue team. There is the frustration and claustrophobia of the current situation, plus the fear of the unknown, the helpful research acknowledged by Moss in an afterword. Her books are slim in length, but mighty in content.
December 29, 2021
2021 Best Books of the Year [#10 of 11]
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