Fell

From Sarah Moss, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Summerwater and Ghost Wall, comes a story about the circumstances and the consequences of isolation.‘A tense page-turner . . . I gulped The Fell down in one sitting’ - Emma Donoghue‘Her work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be’ - The TimesAt 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.But Kate’s neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate’s son, soon realizes she’s missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk – a breath of open air – falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain-rescue operation . . .Unbearably suspenseful, witty and wise, The Fell asks probing questions about the place the world has become since March 2020, and the place it was before. This novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive.‘Gripping, thoughtful and revelatory’ - Paula Hawkins‘This slim, intense masterpiece is one of my best books of the year’ - Rachel Joyce‘One of our very best contemporary novelists’ - Independent

A slim, tense page turner that captures the weird melancholia of locked-down life but also the precious warmth of human connection. I gulped The Fell down in one sitting, Carefully, affectingly and with emotional veracity, Moss opens out Alice’s secrets along with everyone else’s: the mortal fears, the losses, the mistakes. Moss writes so compassionately about human frailty while her own work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be, With The Fell, Sarah Moss seems to have achieved the impossible: she has written a gripping, thoughtful and revelatory book about lockdown, A funny, savage novel, Absorbing . . . ingeniously done . . there's an intoxicating flow to much of the writing . . . a humane, thoughtful reflection on the lockdown experience

Sarah Moss is the author of several novels including the Sunday Times top ten bestseller Summerwater, and Ghost Wall, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. She has also written a memoir of her year living in Iceland. She was born in Glasgow and grew up in the north of England. After moving between Oxford, Canterbury, Reykjavik, west Cornwall and the Midlands, she now lives in Dublin, where she teaches English and creative writing at UCD.