The Fell

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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 main thing this did well is take into consideration the many different experiences we all had during the pandemic. The way some of us were forced to stay home despite home never having been a safe space. The way some of us resented working all through the pandemic while others were able to have the spring and summer off and then some. The way some of us had it off involuntarily and without government benefits to support, digging a deeper and deeper hole and not giving us so much as a stepping stool to help ourselves out. I can’t say it’s all encompassing, but I was impressed by how much it did cover.

Despite Sarah Moss 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. 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! 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. A masterfully tense, deeply empathetic novel about lives stilled and re-examined, and the uncertainty and danger of the world that surrounds them. I was completely riveted by the central questions of its narrative, and by its tender, insightful exploration of the times we are living through -- Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. One of the very best British novelists writing today about contemporary life—if anyone can justify writing a pandemic novel, she's the woman for the job.” 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.

Church Times/Sarum College:

The Fell is very much a novel of our time . . . it takes note of the moment, and captures what seemed unimaginable even a year before it was set. But it also offers hope . . . there may be a time when what is described here is, indeed, in the past, and a novel like The Fell will help us to remember * Church Times * The Fell 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. When Kate takes off on a walk on the mountain, a search and rescue team is sent to try to locate her. Maybe she’ll die without ever touching another human, maybe she’s had her last hug, handshake, air-kiss.”

In England there were all the hotlines where you were encouraged to dob in your neighbours and there was nothing like that in Ireland 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. In addition to the drama of the search mission, we’re privy to the other characters’ concerns through their interior monologues. Rob is mourning the loss of a friend in a climbing accident he witnessed and butting heads with his teenage daughter, who accuses him of preferring the mountain to spending time with her, as her mother did before she and Rob divorced. 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. This novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive.Ghost Wall is the story of a teenage girl who goes on a historical re-enactment weekend with her family. It focuses on her relationship with her dad, an angry, violent man obsessed with the iron age”. In spite of his brutishness, he’s not a character without sympathy, which, says Moss, “wasn’t even a literary move; it’s just how I think about people. A literary defence would be that it’s boring to write a monster, and actually people are more complicated than that. But also I just don’t believe in monsters. 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." The Fell] exhibits truths and contradictions, and it contains a succinct, self-contained story that, simultaneously, encapsulates an author’s whole oeuvre.” 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. 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.