The Fell by Sarah Moss - Review

Happy New Year! I'm a little bit behind on book reviews as I did very little writing for the entire month of December and I now have about five books to write about, plus I want to share the books I got for Christmas (a record breaking eighteen!). My blogs are probably feeling a little bit abandoned, but now it's a new year so I'm ready to get back in the saddle! I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year. 

I bought this book in an independent book shop in Thirsk when I was there in November. It is signed by the author which is really nice, I like to collect signed books. I've read a couple of Sarah Moss books this year and I'll definitely be keeping a look out for more as I really like her simple and uncomplicated prose. 

This book is set in Derbyshire, in the Peak District, in November 2020. It is the first book I've read set in the pandemic and it's interesting, isn't it, to see how it will be depicted in books and films in years to come. Kate lives with her son Matt, and they are currently having to isolate as they've had contact with someone with Covid. They have to isolate for two weeks and they're in the middle of that when Kate can't take it anymore and leaves the house to walk up the fell. 

Alice, their next door neighbour, sees her go. Alice has breast cancer and must shield during the pandemic. Kate and Matt have been bringing her shopping. Kate is furloughed from her job as a waitress and is going slightly mad stuck in the house. It's not exactly a surprise that she breaks the rules and goes for a walk, but Alice doesn't feel able to go to and stop her.

Matt is in the house by himself. Kate is a somewhat chaotic mother but the two get on okay. It takes a while for Matt to realise that Kate has gone out and not returned for several hours. He asks Alice for help, but of course they have to communicate through a closed door. Alice is worried about him but can't do much to help. 

Kate falls and injures herself and when she comes round she's pretty sure something is broken. She tries to help herself, but can't. Matt, realising she is missing, phones the police, even though he knows she's broken the law and is concerned that she will get a fine that they caqn't afford to pay. The police arrive and also have to speak to Matt through a closed door. They send mountain rescue to find Kate and that's the fourth point of view in the book - volunteer rescuer Paul. He must leave his daughter Ellie, for whom it's his custody weekend, to go out in the dark to try to find Kate. 

The book swaps between points of view. It's short but so well done. I felt sympathy for all the characters and understood how Kate felt. Four out of five!

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss - Review

Ghost Wall was my choice for our book club for this year. When I was trying to choose a book I asked my friend Laura for recommendations and she said this as I wanted something a bit gothic. I hadn't realised until my copy arrived that this is a novella, it's really short. That's good for book club as it means more people manage to finish it! I only bought Summerwater by Sarah Moss because I knew I would be reading this soon, and now I've read two of hers I can say that I really like her style. It's concise and to the point, which I appreciate! 

So in this book, seven people are in Northumberland reenacting the Iron Age lives of people who lived nearby. Sylvie is there with her parents; she's around fifteen and named after an ancient goddess, Sulevia. Her dad is a bus driver and her mum is a cashier in a supermarket. Her dad is abusive; there are bruises on Mum, and he beats Sylvie pretty severely with a leather belt after finding her bathing naked in the stream. This is not a one off occurrence and she is really quite frightened of him, trying her best to not set him off and wishing everyone else wouldn't make him angry. 

The others on camp are a professor, Jim, and three of his students; Dan, Pete, and Molly. They are archaeology students or similar, and are doing the reenactment in their summer holidays. It's not explained how Jim and Sylvie's dad know each other or exactly why Sylvie and her family are there, except that her dad is an enthusiast about the time period. He insists the fire isn't allowed to go out, and while the professor and the students sleep in modern tents, Sylvie and her parents sleep in an authentic hut on uncomfortable beds. Everyone also has to wear linen tunics and moccasins. 

The girls are mostly sent off foraging for food. One day all the young people go to the sea and swim, and Sylvie finds herself watching Molly swim naked. This is partly why she strips off to bathe later in the sream. The men set traps for rabbits and later have to skin them for a stew. Food is scarce, though.

Sylvie knows a lot about the countryside because she often goes hiking with her dad and has picked things up from him. She also knows how obsessed he is with the bogs and bog people - people who were sacrificed to the bogs by their communities. Their relationship deteriorates, and Sylvie finds herself fighting for her life. 

I liked the book a lot - it's set in a heatwave and I liked how gothic the searing sunshine was and how it added to the stress of the book. I liked Sylvie and wanted her to succeed. I'm giving this five out of five and definitely definitely will read something else by Sarah Moss!

Summerwater by Sarah Moss - Review

So I was reading The Trans Issue by Shon Faye and then I had an iced coffee incident in which I upended a nearly full iced coffee over a pile of books. I ruined three books, made a few more quite sticky, and had no coffee. I was absolutely fuming, I'm sure you can imagine. I reordered the books I'd ruined, but had to pick something else up in the meantime. 

So I chose this because it was very short and I knew the replacement copy of The Trans Issue would arrive probably a couple of days later. However, when it arrived, it was damaged, so that was out of the window as it had to go back, and copy THREE had to make its way to me... But I had started and finished reading this in the meantime. I had bought it the previous week on buy one get one half price in Waterstones. 

It's set on the Summer solstice on a Scottish loch. There's a few log cabins around the loch, some of which are owned by the occupiers as holiday homes, and some of which are rented out as holiday cottages. And it's raining, it's raining all day so no sunshine is seen, and as it's Scotland in mid-summer it's light for hours, so it's just a kind of grey light all day. 

The book is made up of little vignettes of some of the people staying around the loch. To begin with, a middle aged mum goes running, even though she shouldn't be. She casts judgement on everyone else staying at the loch, including the mum and child who arrived the previous day and started playing loud music. They are some kind of Eastern European (I'm not sure it says exactly where from, but I'm sorry if it did and I missed that) and almost everyone in the book is very judgemental of them. 

A man helps his ailing wife and the two go on a trip to the far end of the loch. He thinks she can do much more than she does, but further on we see her point of view and see she's suffering from some kind of dementia and forgetting a lot of things. A teenaged boy, annoyed by his family and sick of sharing a room with his sister, goes out kayaking and is nearly taken out by the bad weather. Two young children, whose mother has agoraphobia and worries endlessly about them, go out to play on the rope swings on the beach. They meet the little Eastern European girl. 

A young couple has sex. A dad worries about his family. A teenager sneaks out. Each vignette shows us something unknown about the people in each cabin, and something which an observer may not see. I knew the book was going to end in tragedy, I could just feel it, and indeed, the ending is shocking but brilliant. I really enjoyed this book and am giving it five out of five.