Reviews
#TheFell is a short, fast paced read about how the loss of human physical connection has effected the world and also the way covid is in small towns. We focus on Alice who has been in contact with someone with covid and is on day ten of isolation with her teenage son. She feels herself going crazy so goes for an illegal walk into the countryside, thinking she’d be back in time for dinner - instead she ends up seriously hurt and lost. When her son realises she isn’t coming back, he has to break lockdown to ask his shielding neighbour for help. The language, as always, is beautiful but also claustrophobic which absolutely captures covid. It compared what would normally happen when someone goes missing leaving their teen son on their own vs covid life where he is alone in a house waiting for phone calls. It shows how we missed human contact and how that effects people. It’s true to the pandemic, non romanticised and also not overly dramatic. It is a snapshot of one moment of covid with one little neighbourhood which many will recognise. I can imagine it being studied in the future when they look back at this time. It was weird to read now but the pace is such that you race through it, and enjoy the beautiful descriptions of the Peak District and heart of humanity. I read this in one evening and will definitely recommend to others - especially if you enjoy Sarah Moss’s other work.
It's November 2020 and Sarah Moss invites us into a small Peak District community and the affect of the pandemic on its residents. There are Kate and Matt, a single mother and her teenage son, days into self-isolation after being contact traced. Alice their neighbour, still shielding due to cancer. Suzy her daughter who joins her for FaceTime dinners, worn down by remote working expectations and resenting the “holiday” given to the furloughed. They are all struggling with isolation and the different pressures of their situations. Juggling rules with their own needs and wellbeing. Kate, used getting through the days with long periods outdoors and the freedom of the woods and hills breaks her quarantine. Just for a while, just for a short walk, alone, and far from other people. Her son Matt, frustrated by prolonged close contact with his mother and bored of being indoors alone, soon realises that she’s been gone too long, and the hills are dark. Matt is alone, barred from human contact and there are large fines for breaking the rules but his mother is missing and there could have been an accident… This is the first “lockdown” book I’ve read since the pandemic began. I’ve read plenty of apocalyptic fiction and a few things that reference Covid but nothing yet that tackles it head on. But I can’t resist Sarah Moss’s work and lockdown is a subject made for her recent style. Her ability to create tightly-wound tension and creeping foreboding, as honed in the brilliant Ghost Wall and Summerwater, has reached almost supernatural heights (or would depths be more appropriate?) in The Fell. Moss describes the “accumulating dread” of the threats of modern life, from Covid to climate emergency and accumulating dread is an apt description of the Fell’s anxious narrative. The claustrophobic, fearful atmosphere of lockdown is almost unbearably reconstructed with all the frustration and loneliness. The moral mazes of rules -bent and broken - and the justifications for doing so. She captures both the community spirit of neighbours looking out for one another and supporting the shielding, and the curtain-twitching resentment and blame. The inner voices of her characters coalesce all the contradictions of the situation and each is painfully human. Most importantly Moss reveals the incredible power of fiction for creating empathy. The language of the media with its (claimed) objectivity is often an invitation for judgement, the selectively gathered and presented facts encouraging certain conclusions. By imbuing Kate and Suzy and Alice and Matt with so much life Moss allows us to really see and understand the different ways that lockdown affected people and to feel what they felt. The saying “we’re all in the same storm but we’re in different boats” gained some traction in 2020 when the unevenness of experience, from furlough to free school meals, became clear. The Fell takes you right into the cramped confines of its characters’ boats, feeling each calm and swell and how both could be unbearable for different people. The meticulously crafted voices of the characters are truly a window into the minds of others with all their vagaries and humours, their contradictions, and their idiosyncrasies. Kate’s story in particular is heartbreaking as she assesses her choices and considers her mistakes, suffocated by her home, the lockdown and her life. Yet Moss finds warmth and humour and affection in all of them, moments that break through the oppressive atmosphere like breaths of crisp, clean air. It's also a hymn (Kate sings several on her walk and its aftermath) to the importance of the outside world, places as well and people. She particularly captures the strength, wildness, and consolation of the natural world. Beautiful, cruel and vital, she brings to life the rugged landscape of the north of England. Kate’s [removal] from the outside precipitates the disaster of the book just as humanity’s distance from nature has created the climate crisis that lurks here in the warm October and haunted the lakeside in Summerwater. It’s a difficult read for a pandemic that is still ongoing and at times was almost unbearably true and clear but it is phenomenally powerful for reviving and remembering that time. I know that in the future, this is the book I’ll turn to when I need to look back on 2020.
