The Fell by Sarah Moss

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on March 1, 2022

At its heart, The Fell is a meditation on the effects of social isolation. Those effects have been exacerbated for some during the pandemic, but loneliness can strike even when isolation is not encouraged by health policies. The story morphs into a wilderness rescue, but the plight of the victim creates little tension. The primary focus is on the thoughts of the central characters: an injured woman, her young son, their neighbor, and a member of the search-and-rescue team.

Anxiety pervades the characters in The Fell. They live in or near the mountains and moors on the outskirts of Greater Manchester in the County of Derbyshire. They are enduring pandemic quarantine rules that trap them in their homes. People are allowed outside only for essential purposes. The police use drones to record and shame people who engage in recreational walking. The central character views the quarantine in the broader context of history, a reminder that “the authorities have never liked to have commoners walking the land instead of getting and selling.”

When life in quarantine becomes too much for Kate, she takes a walk in the fells. (I had to look this up, but “fell walking” in Northern England refers to walking in hills and high land.) Whether the walk is illegal (Kate seems to think so) or only strongly discouraged by government policy (as another part of the book seems to suggest), Kate and her son both believe she should have stayed inside. That becomes obvious to the reader when, quarantine notwithstanding, Kate falls in the failing light and breaks her leg.

Kate is Matt’s mum. He’s alone in house, worried at his mother’s absence. Matt is afraid his mum will be arrested for breaking quarantine. He knows he’s not allowed outside during the quarantine but he visits their neighbor Alice, who won’t let him in but calls the mountain rescue service. All the officials who talk to Matt stay outside or speak to him via telephone with a masked number, which seems improbably cruel given that the kid is home alone with no support system.

Like Kate, Alice spends her quarantine fretting. She thinks about death and cancer and worries about her children. She thinks about Mark, with whom she shared 45 years of life. Alice is the most opinionated character, although the characters all share attitudes of gloom. “Social distancing,” Alice thinks, “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 and there’s no way of knowing.” She also complains that the pandemic has infected language by turning “distance” into a verb.

Alice thinks rude thoughts about doctors who blame patients for socializing and acquiring COVID. Aren’t patients always putting themselves at risk (she asks herself) by deciding to drive or play sports or sleep with the wrong person or carry a big pile of laundry up the stairs? “Alice thinks, let us give thanks for our pure blind luck as well as our warm beds and safe houses, though the problem with giving thanks for your own luck is that you’re also giving thanks that the misfortune landed on someone else.”

Rob is a first responder. He rescues people who have gone missing on the mountain. Rob’s daughter Ellie is with him for the weekend. She isn’t happy when his job requires him to leave her to search for Kate. Rob, on the other hand, enjoys doing some good by volunteering for the mountain rescue team. He decided to be self-employed so he wouldn’t have to put up with employers who gripe that volunteers refuse to work overtime so they can be available for rescues when needed.

The Fell is a character-driven novel that is undisturbed by a plot. Kate’s disappearance is simply an excuse for the reader to tune into the characters’ internal monologues. After her fall, Kate’s mind wanders as she tries to summon the strength to crawl through the heath. Perhaps she is entering a state of delirium as she converses with a raven. Some of her thoughts turn out to be lyrics from Celtic folk music (I had to google odd-sounding sentences to discover that). It is a reasonable place for Kate’s mind to go, given that she dabbled with folk singing before she met Paul, her ex-husband, a meeting about which she is now ambivalent, as she is about much of her life.

There is something to be said for a novel that recognizes both the public health necessity of a quarantine during a pandemic and the emotional necessity of escaping confinement that is imposed by outside forces. The characters whine about their circumstances a bit too much, but doesn’t everyone? They at least do so in amusingly droll prose. While The Fell might not appeal to readers who require a more substantive plot than “woman goes missing and people worry about her,” this short novel is worth reading for Sarah Moss’ observational take on the depressing nature of life in the midst of a pandemic.

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Summerwater by Sarah Moss

First published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on January 12, 2021

Summerwater follows a day in the lives of people staying in log cabins at a holiday park on a loch in Scotland. It has been raining for days, a biblical rain that creates an apocalyptic dread. The worries that occupy characters approach the apocalyptic: global warming, Brexit, family discord. Forced to stay inside, family members judge each other. Peering out windows, they judge their neighbors.

Justine is up at dawn, running and thinking about her husband Steve, who complains that she’s obsessed with fitness. Later in the novel, Steve complains (mostly to himself) about the Bulgarians (or maybe they’re Romanians) who keep them awake at night with their parties and loud music. Steve also complains (only to himself) that Justine is on the couch watching porn on her company laptop, at the risk of getting fired and depriving the family of her income.

David is retired, visiting the holiday park with his wife Mary as they did when the kids were young. Taking Mary to a café, David drives too fast in the rain, perhaps in a deliberate attempt to frighten her. David seems to resent the success that his children achieved. He recalls with bitterness his daughter’s youthful lectures about “how everyone ought to behave,” unappreciative of all his generation has done to make life better for her generation (as if a new generation should be grateful that their parents did the things they ought to have done).

Josh and Milly are trying to have simultaneous orgasms because Josh read that their marriage will last longer if they master the technique. Milly thinks about another man to help her along because she’s cold in the cabin and would rather have a cup of tea. They’re planning to move, leaving all their friends behind. Milly sees the unceasing rain as a warning of bad times to come.

The only people who seem to be happy are the Bulgarians/ Romanians with their loud parties. Their daughter Violetta is less happy when she’s told to go back to her own country by Steve’s daughter Lola. Lola's brother Jack worries that the music will bother his mother, who is always tired, but there is something about the carefree manner of the Bulgarians that he finds intriguing.

One of the best chapters involves Alex, a disenchanted 16-year-old who takes his kayak onto the loch during the pouring rain. His parents seem unconcerned about the danger he will face.

Between the chapters that narrate the story are brief chapters that describe the atmosphere or setting. One imagines the impact of soundwaves from the Bulgarians’ music on fox cubs and anthills. The first such chapter reminds us of all the sounds we barely register, the sounds we only notice when they stop. Sarah Moss revisits the theme at the novel’s end, when a boy hears a sound he can never unhear.

Moss writes intense scenes that drip with tension. As Alex maneuvers his kayak across the loch, his hands are so cold he can’t free his grip from the paddle. As Violetta hangs over the loch on a rope, Lola throws stones at her rather than helping her swing back to shore. A little girl named Izzie gazes out her bedroom window at night, certain that something evil is creeping between the cabins. With so much foreshadowing of doom, it isn’t a surprise that the ending is not happy.

The story is powerful but gloomy. It risks becoming oppressive as each chapter generates a new sense of foreboding. Even without the risk of imminent harm that characters often face, the harm caused by the daily grind of life — judgments and nationalism and unkindness within families — is enough to wear the reader down. Some readers might dislike the social commentary.

Yet by the end, the novel suggests that gloom is not the only response to dreary days. Maybe dancing with the Bulgarians is the best approach to creating a community. Still, the ending matches the story’s apocalyptic tone; disaster awaits, dancing only forestalls the inevitable. Readers who want an upbeat novel should look elsewhere. Summerwater nevertheless captures that angst that so many people feel — that perhaps more people should feel — as the world continues its relentless march toward chaos.

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