The Fell

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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?” If we’ve learned anything from this past year, it’s that autonomy is as illusory in real life as it is for fictional characters. Mia Levitin 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.

And then, there's my favorite tea quote: "And tea, Mum'll be glad to find tea in the pot when she comes in." Expertly woven . . . This portrait of humans and their neighboring wild creatures in their natural landscape and in their altered world is darkly humorous, arrestingly honest, and intensely lyrical . . . A triumph of economy and insight.” She doesn’t even want to remember singing in pubs, how can that ever happen again, the singing or the pubs let alone both. 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.

The Fell reflects the lives we have been living for the last 18 months in a way no other writer has dared to do. There is wit, there is compassion, there is a tension that builds like a pressure cooker. This slim, intense masterpiece is one of my best books of the year -- Rachel Joyce

Mark ended the interview by asking Sarah how she finds herself judging other people’s work. ‘I'm intrigued by the part of being a successful writer that involves commenting and judging on other people's writing, and you are going to be a judge for the Sunday Times Charlotte Aiken, Young Writer of the Year Award. How challenging do you find it judging the writing of other people?’ 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. 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. If there was any doubt whether the pandemic would inspire literature that will endure beyond the crisis, The Fell, a slender but illuminating lightning strike of a book, should put that to rest.” Alice, widowed and lonely, is shielding after cancer treatment. She wonders if “maybe she’ll die without ever touching another human”. Over an on-screen dinner, her daughter threatens to call the police on Kate for breaking the rules even though she and Matt have been helping Alice by doing her grocery shopping. “Sometimes Alice thinks she’d rather have a Radio 4 podcast than Susie with her dinner.”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: 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. 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 two weeks of isolation, but she just can't take it any more - 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.

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.The Fell, 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. 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." The Fell is a thought-provoking and evocative read, exploring as it does themes around isolation, anxiety and compliance during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. 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. 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.

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. And now she is required to isolate for two weeks, deprived of the socialization of her job and hikes in the Peak District. With Moss’s trademark attention to both the beauty and danger of the natural world, the moors come alive as almost another character. But Kate’s delight at having escaped outdoors is short-lived: with night approaching, she falls and breaks her leg.I THINK IT’S ready, Ellie says. Her hair, pale, silky, swings over her face as she peers into the oven. You get the plates, Dad. You’ll need the oven gloves, Rob hears himself say, and she sighs, as he knew she would. No, really, I thought it would be more fun to get like sixth-degree burns and spend the next four hours screaming in agony in the waiting room at A and E. Fourth degree, he says, there’s nothing after that. 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 two weeks of isolation, but she just can’t take it any more – 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.