This is the first I’ve read by this author and I was instantly attracted to her writing style.

The story follows the main characters Kate, her son Matt, neighbour Alice and mountain rescue volunteer, Rob. Set during the COVID-19 pandemic second national lockdown we find Kate and Matt in the middle of a 14 day quarantine. Kate is a struggling single mum, who like many, has had her world turned upside down. Unable to stand the isolation any longer, Kate breaks the rules when she heads out for a walk in the nearby hills. When she doesn’t return, Matt raises the alarm and the search begins.

The way the storyline flowed, together with the way she captured the thoughts of the characters as they struggled with their isolation and fears, made for a excellent read and one that I’m sure many can relate to. Set in the Peak District, with wonderful descriptive text of the ruggedness and beauty of the countryside.

Highly recommend.

Many thanks to Sarah Moss, Picador Books and NetGalley for the review copy.

Like Moss’s previous book, Summerwater, The Fell takes place over a single day. The book blurb gives the basic set up, so it isn’t a spoiler to say that Kate and her son are self-isolating (during the UK’s November 2020 lockdown, I think) and it all gets too much for Kate who decides to go for a walk, which is technically illegal, but she isn’t going to see anyone so it can’t do any harm, right? Matt is her son who shares a house with her and suddenly realises she isn’t there any longer. Alice is their next door neighbour. These are three of the main characters in the book. The other is Rob who is there on the first page and is part of the mountain rescue team that the book blurb perhaps unhelpfully tells us about. I think I might have wanted to discover the basic plot line of the book for myself, but I guess it might be that the focus of the book is very much not the plot but more the reactions and emotions of these four characters as the plot unfolds.

The narrative moves from one main character to another in a series of almost “stream of consciousness” chapters where we listen in to the thoughts of that chapter’s character. The voices of each character are clearly distinct and you can open the book at random and know from the style exactly whose thoughts you are listening to on that page.

This is a COVID book and it does an excellent job of capturing a time and a place. Anyone who lived in England during the November 2020 lockdown will recognise the setting with people’s movements limited, fines for going out when you shouldn’t, fears about picking up COVID from your grocery delivery, the NHS making priority calls about who to help that are necessarily short term and might have long term consequences for the nation’s mental health as well as physical etc.. In many ways, the book feels like a time capsule that has recorded that period and allows us now to look back on it. Although I am not 100% sure why we would want to do that as it really wasn’t a lot of fun.

My favourite character in the book is Alice and I found her chapter the most engaging (despite the drama experienced by Kate). Alice’s chapters really capture well what it felt like to be in lockdown. The weakest chapters for me were those voiced by Matt, although his central dilemma about whether to call for help because that would draw attention to the fact that his mother had broken the law and might mean they lose the house or are separated as a family unit was, for me, the highlight of the book. Kate’s and Rob’s chapters are interesting for Kate’s imagined conversation with a raven and for Rob’s internal battle where rescuing people contends with family responsibilities.

I recently read Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat. Where Moss has written a book based on COVID, Hall wrote a book inspired by COVID. And I think different people will react in different ways to the two different approaches. For some, what Moss has done here will capture a time and a place brilliantly and be an effective way to engaged with the pandemic. Others, including me, will respond better to Hall’s imaginative abstraction of COVID. That said, this is probably my favourite of the three Sarah Moss novels I have read (the other two being Ghost Wall and Summerwater). They are all good books but this one just has the edge for me.

Wow! What a claustrophobic read!

Set during the COVID pandemic, Kate is desperate to escape isolation. The pandemic has already caused her so many problems, being made to stay at home, is a step to far. As the afternoon draws to a close, Kate sets off alone, up the Fell, in search of a respite, only to find herself in danger.

Set over a period of 12 hours, this slim novel isn’t an easy read, especially if you have struggled with the events of the last year or have been personally affected. There are various characters worrying about Kate, even as they deal with their own personal issues.

My favourite thing about the author’s writing style is the way the characters view everyone else in the story. She creates an air of voyeurism. You actually feel like you are watching the character’s lives and the only person privy to their thoughts.

I’m quickly becoming a fan of Sarah Moss since discovering her books and I would highly recommend trying them.

I’ve read and enjoyed quite a few of Sarah Moss’s previous novels but I think this one is my new favourite. The Fell follows Kate who is having to self-isolate with her teenage son due to having had contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid. She is really struggling with being trapped indoors and convinces herself that a walk on the moor won’t hurt anyone and no one will ever know she’s done it. We also follow her neighbour Alice, who has cancer and has had to shield throughout the pandemic. Alice sees Kate leave but doesn’t stop her so when Kate’s son tells Alice Kate is missing she immediately fears the worst and they call the police. This novel explores so many points of view regarding the pandemic, the restrictions and human nature in the face of all that has happened in the last year and a half. Moss makes you understand all the different views and to have some understanding of why people have struggled in different ways with different aspects of the pandemic. This is a short novel but it’s one that took me a few days to read as I wanted to really digest what I was reading. I really loved this novel and I highly recommend it.

The Fell is a slim novel, one that captures the boredom, ennui and frustration of lockdown life a little too accurately for me - it feels too soon to be stuck in the minutiae of last winter again already, and I struggled to engage as a result.

I could understand the desire of the central character to get out, but as a regular moor walker I was frustrated by their apparently out of character choices - which says more about me than the book itself I fear! Anyway, once events were taking a turn for the worse I found the book more interesting and engaging - the quiet studies of lives unravelling were worthwhile in and of themselves.

I may have found this more rewarding at a few years distance

"How much is the fine, anyway, though however much it is she can’t afford it and she’d rather have an untreated fracture than risk prison, even more stupid to end up in prison because you couldn’t bear being locked up at home than to go get yourself into trouble on the fells when you should know better."

Sarah Moss's The Fell is the first novel I have read that accurately and piercingly captures the lived experience of Autumn 2021 in England and the second lockdown, emphasising both the alterity of the world in which we found ourselves living, and its banal nature:

"Hope rises for a moment, that he can maybe at least make a toastie and put some music on, not that he can’t do those things when she’s around but he could do them better, more peacefully, if she’s out, though of course she can’t be out, not even for a walk, not for another six days, seven hours and twenty minutes. Give or take. The fourteen days, he heard her ask on the phone, what time does it end, is it noon or midnight or from when I last saw my colleague, which would have been about five o’clock on Thursday?"

Stylistically, I enjoyed the writing which, if not quite stream of consciousness, focuses on the characters' thoughts more than their actions.

And as with Ghost Wall this is a commendably brief novel, although as with that book it feels this could have been slimmer still, with the second half rather lacking the impact of the first, which perhaps points to one issue I had personally: that the mountain rescue story itself didn't really grab me. And in part this may be because the characters in the novel felt like types more than people (and they know it: she’s becoming a grumpy old woman, that’s what, she’s even boring herself, it’s going to be avocados she’s complaining about next).

Overall 3.5 stars

This was a short novel but an important one. Moss has a way of making sense of the world - even the strangest contemporary situations - and I feel like this will be one of the best pandemic novels we will see.

Now I’ve not read many Sarah Moss’s works as of yet but oh my did the fell just become one of my favourite books I’ve read this year!!! I know I could of savoured this book but oh no I was poised and ready to just read it all in two sittings. And that I did 😅

Set in today’s world and in the times of the pandemic,delving into the year of our lives that we never saw coming.
with the past book I’ve read from Sarah Moss (summerwater) we follow a bunch of characters perspectives this time only 4 people who are interconnected in one way or the other. A mother and son who are in self isolation, their neighbour a woman who has been through cancer who’s currently shielding alone and a mountain rescuer that we get the perspective of in the latter stages of the novel.

Set over a single day (like summer water) An incident occurs on a walking trail involving Kate when she decides to take a hike up to the fell near her home while she is meant to be isolating, not telling no one where she’s gone leaving her phone and many things behind which soon leads to Kate being in a spot of bother.

I know once you see the sentence pandemic book/or set in a pandemic, What we all have been through in the last 18 months and counting. A book like this could not be right for many people right now and of course that’s okay, but oh I advise anyone to pick this book up (when you feel the time is right) just to experience the writing and the way Moss has told this story of a time in our lives where we didn’t know when there was going to be light at the end of the tunnel,what the future held/still holds and just to be able to write this story with so much care, ease, time plus I’m always amazed when seeing the size of the book being 150-170 pages long and Moss really knows how to fill those pages out and just filled with greatness.

I would like to add too that this is a story that really focus’s on mental health,loneliness and the claustrophobic feeling of having to stay indoors for a long period of time day after day for so much of the year and how this can/has affected so many people’s lives the past nearly two years.

November 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kate has come into contact with someone who tested positive and is told to quarantine for two weeks. Being confined to the house doesn't come easy to her and living in a remote location she decides to go for a walk up the fell, its bleak and isolated, the tourist season has passed and nobody will ever know...

The Fell is a short novel that perfectly portrays the pandemic conditions and the difficult decisions faced by those involved, their thoughts and fears as over the course of one evening the seriousness of the situation becomes apparent. Its thought provoking, raw and totally recommended.

This is the first 'pandemic' book that I have picked up, having avoided them in the past as the history is just too close. However this was totally engrossing and the focus is not on the virus but upon the effect of lockdown and isolation upon individuals and we are given various perspectives.
Kate, a single mum, is a waitress and lives with her teenage son Matt at the foot of the Fells. Money is always tight but the relationship between mother and son seems to be close and caring. At the beginning of the novel, Kate and her son are having to self-isolate as she has come into contact with an infected person. Kate loves the outdoors and we get a real sense of how being confined to the house is affecting her mentally - the need to get outside into the clean fresh air of the Fells. So one evening, even though she knows that she is breaking the law, knows that it is wrong and there may be consequences, she walks out of her gate and onto the Fell.
With his mum missing, we experience Matt's emotions as, like a typical teenager, his focus switches from food, to anxiety, to fear, to helplessness. He knows that his mum has broken the law, but he is also worried sick about her and doesn't know what to do.
Another perspective we see is that of Alice, their neighbour who is having to shield because she is a vulnerable person, and for this reason,Kate and Matt do her shopping for her. Through Alice, we understand the emotional impact of total isolation - her family live away from her and she has dinners with them via Zoom.
The whole novella covers a time span of only a few hours, but it is emotional and tense and Sarah Moss is asking questions about the place that the world has become. We see compassion and friendship. We see fears and personal struggles. It is a book that touches you because this world is still with us.
Thank you, Netgalley, I loved this one.

I think I needed five years between me and the pandemic to really appreciate what Moss has done with The Fell: it’s all still a little bit too raw and so I wanted to like this more than I did. But that’s not to say that The Fell is not a good novel. It’s short and sharp, and similarly to Moss’s last book Summerwater, it gives voices to a relatively diverse cast of characters, albeit in third person. My absolute favourite bit of this tiny novel was the conversation between the raven and Kate, which we just my sort of thing, a stern and grumpy raven telling someone off for breaking self-isolation rules. I just wanted more by the end.

Rating: 3/5 stars

On a dusky night in November 2020, a woman breaks her quarantine to escape the claustrophobia of her own home for a walk on the moors. She plans to be back within a few hours. Nobody will ever need to know she even left… An unlucky fall turns a short walk into a mountain rescue operation, against the background of a global health crisis.
Capturing the feeling of isolation, paradoxically combined with heightened social pressure, and other unique anxieties of the 2020 pandemic, Sarah Moss’s latest work serves as a time capsule to a recent past we hope to leave forever behind.

Sarah Moss’ work has been an automatic purchase for me ever since 2014 when I first encountered her work and her talent as an author is above questioning in my mind. That being said: I feel there’s been a break in style within her oeuvre from 2016 onwards. Most exemplary of “older Sarah’s” writing to me is The Tidal Zone, my personal favourite of hers. It follows the fallout of a small but life-changing event that changes sends a rippling effect throughout a family. It’s an intimate and insightful character portrait, that left a deep impression on me.
The new Era of Sarah includes Ghostwall, Summerwater, and now The Fell, and is characterised by shorter works, written in a more stream-of-consciousness tone, taking place over the course of a few days. They combine slice of life descriptions of often mundane things with a (often less than subtly introduced) current socio-political issue. As you can probably guess: I strongly prefer “Old Sarah” over her newer work.
My review of The Fell is, for that reason, going to have a lot of overlap with my review of Summerwater: they both do a wonderful job of capturing the feeling of a time and a place (Summerwater captures the post-brexit climate in England, and The Fell pinpoints the specific anxieties of the 2020 Lockdown). On the other hand, both are só minimalistic to the point of feeling mundane and bare-boned. Whenever I think back on The Fell, I foresee myself supplementing the story with my own quarantine memories, as none of the actual characters or their lives were memorable enough to stick, leaving only the feeling this book left me with.
You can debate the merit of being able to vividly capture a snapshot of a year in the British “Zeitgeist”, and whether that’s enough to make a successful novel. It’s a valid choice if it’s a conscious one, and authors like Ali Smith seem to have made a career out of it. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that New-Sarah often reminds me a bit too closely of Ali Smiths work. It makes my job of recommending either easier: if you like one, you’ll most likely enjoy the other. In my personally opinion though, since we already have Ali, I hope Sarah makes a return to her original form.

Many thanks to Picador for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The Fell is available for purchase from November 11th 2021 onwards in digital and physical format.

I read this in one sitting and enjoyed it. I felt that the characters were perhaps a bit cliche - it may have been more original to swap some of the solid genders around (i.e. sulky female teen / hero male / pining female widow). But I guess they are sort of irrelevant, as is the very simple plot. The book is more of a focus on the politics and events of lockdown 2020. It is a heart-warming and compassionate exploration of these themes and even mentioned things that I had already forgotten - i.e. students getting the 10 grand fines, and the mink cull. The fact that I have forgotten these events ties in with how seemingly quickly everything is getting back to 'normal' at the moment - which makes the book even more pivotal and at odds. I also loved her writing style - very similar to Summerwater where she builds up the tension throughout and you're never quite sure what the 'tragedy' is going to be.

Kate is not finding lockdown easy and being forced to self-isolate is her worst nightmare. She is used to wandering the Peak District and not even pottering in the garden can compensate for this loss. One evening, she caves in to temptation and heads for the fell. There will be no one around and no harm will be done.

This short novel is packed full of ideas: about how people cope with lockdown in different ways, about the choices people make and their unforeseen consequences, about families and love and all its complexities, about the future of the planet and about life and health and death.

Again using a number of perspectives of events, Moss constructs a powerful narrative. Not always an easy read but beautifully written and with a real compassion and understanding for her characters. Compact but powerful.

Fresh, gripping and witty, The Fell brings us back to a claustrophobic time when neighbour distrusted neighbour and rule following became a way of life. There will be many books written about Covid 19 but in The Fell, Sarah Moss has taken one small community and used it to tell a global story. Thought provoking and entertaining

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. Set it a Covid lockdown it was a brave decision by the author but worth it! It really portrays the cabin fever induced by lockdown and the book being written from different points of view adds to the story. Great characters and well written.

I can't really say too much about this tiny book as i don't want to spoiler it for others but have to say I was dreading this book at first. I got swooped up in excitement at seeing an ARC of a new Sarah Moss work and my heart slightly sank when I discovered that this was set during the pandemic.. I've stayed and will continue to stay away from "Covid 19" books for 2 reasons. 1 because I read books for escapism and 2 because I simply feel that it is just too early particularly considering that we are all still going through this. However luckily this is not cashing in on the coronavirus cause and mentions it only as a setting in time and a basic plot device. There is no medical detail or harrowing content and it is just in the background as a way to explain certain aspects of the plot.. There is mention of someone shielding in case anyone might find that triggering.

What I really enjoyed in this book was the realism. Moss is excellent at putting herself in the place of many different characters and exploring their thoughts and feelings around the pandemic and how it affects them in their day to day lives.

I read this claustrophobic little book in one sitting and am still thinking about it days later.

The Fell centres on one evening in late 2020 when Kate, who is in a fortnight isolation with her teenage son, breaks the law and leaves the house for a hike and doesn't return. The point of view switches between Kate, her son, their neighbour and the local volunteer rescue team as time slips by and Kate is still missing.

Moss has perfectly captured the feeling of being caged during lockdown(s) and isolation but does so in a way that does not feel gratuitous and the different POVs really cover all the levels of emotion that come with a pandemic. If you are concerned about reading anything too close to home then I would say Moss has managed to discuss the current issues without being overly triggering and handles the topic with care.

Sarah Moss never disappoints. Every perspective in this harrowing, timely novella is rendered with such realism and empathy that I recognised myself even in characters very different from me on the surface. A compelling COVID-era account that will be read and re-read in years to come when people seek to understand what it was like during this moment in history.

It's November 2020 and Kate is in quarantine after the cafe where she works is pinged for Covid. Slightly depressed and restless she decides on impulse to go for a walk on the Fells near her home. She doesn't tell her teenage son, Max where she's going but her shielding neighbour Alice sees her stride off. Several hours later she hasn't returned and a mountain rescue team is sent out to find her.

Told from several points of view including that of one of the mountain rescue team this is a brief but compelling look at life in Covid Britain. The characters are portrayed sympathetically on the whole and the parts set on the fell where Kate lies with a broken leg are vivid and tense. It is written in a stream of consciousness style which may not appeal to everyone but for me it added to the realism and urgency of the text. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.