The Fell
by Sarah Moss
The plot’s premise is simple and, as in Summerwater, it unfolds over a single day. The novel(la) is set in November 2020, in a remote village in the Peak District, during the UK’s Covid lockdown. Kate, one of the quartet of main characters, finds herself increasingly restless in the middle of a two-week mandatory quarantine period. Neither she nor her teenage son Matt are actually infected, but they are obliged to stay at home in view of a contact with a Covid-positive person. Surely, Kate thinks, a visit to the fells she loves so much will hardly hurt anyone? On impulse, she leaves home for what is meant to be a quick walk, but matters get complicated when she falls and sustains an injury.
As in
John McGregor’s Lean, Fall, Stand, the ensuing rescue operation and race
against time give The Fell the trappings of a thriller, but that is not
really the point of the novel. What
makes The Fell particularly interesting is a technique Moss also uses in
Summerwater, that is, the alternating of different points of view,
conveyed in almost stream-of-consciousness style, as we are drawn into the
thoughts of the protagonists, all of whom have been, in different ways,
affected by the Covid pandemic. There is
Kate herself, feeling increasingly confined at home, the claustrophobia of her
little house accentuating her feelings of inadequacy. There is Matt, torn between reporting his
missing mum and risking her getting a fine which they cannot afford. There is Alice, their pensioner neighbour and
possible the character I liked best, musing about mortality and privilege; and
also Rob, one of the rescue team, who juggles daring rescues with the stress of
family life. Their thoughts and
feelings, and such dialogue as there is, have an authentic feel to them.
The Fell feels timely but, once the pandemic is (hopefully) past, it will also serve as an important historical document albeit in the context of a fictional story. Moss is highly observant, conveying with startling empathy the minute details of life in lockdown and quarantine. She does not judge. While at times, the novel seems to suggest a frustration at Covid measures, this is no anti-vax manifesto and its approach is balanced and understanding both of the need for the enforcement of Covid measures, and the disruption and difficulties that these inevitably bring.
Out on the moors, missing her choir practice, Kate sings Thomas Ravenscroft’s “Remember O thou man”. The choice of music is probably an oblique hint at the deeper themes of the novella – “Adam’s fall” and his subsequent redemption, as mentioned in this Renaissance carol, reflect Kate’s physical fall, but also raise philosophical questions about life and death, actions and consequences, guilt and absolution.
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