The Fell by Sarah Moss. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
If The Fell had been written by anyone else, I am not sure I would have picked up. It is too soon for fiction about the pandemic that is still happening has been my response whenever I’ve seen or heard mention of the topic. Sarah Moss is one of my favourite authors, so I made an exception.
It is November 2020, and Kate is in the middle of a two-week quarantine period. She is missing her routine, her long walks and the feeling of fresh air in her lungs. The moor will be deserted, so where is the harm in going for a walk when Kate knows that she won’t run into people?
Told from four different perspectives, we have Kate, her teenage son Matt, their neighbour Alice who is shielding, and Rob, who is a search and rescue volunteer.
Kate’s walk doesn’t go as planned, and Matt realises that she is missing. He is desperate to find her but doesn’t want to get his mother in trouble for breaking quarantine either. Maybe Alice knows where Kate went?
At under 150 pages, Moss has given us an intense and claustrophobic novel that never feels rushed. Each of the characters is fully realised, and true to Moss’s previous work, the sense of place is so strong that it almost feels like you are right beside Kate.
The Fell is a thought-provoking portrayal of the impact of the lockdowns and an exploration of why people made the decisions that they did. I loved it.
The Fell by Sarah Moss is published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, and is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook format.
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