Sarah Moss is no newcomer to writing about isolation. Both “Summerwater” and “Ghost Wall” are set in places of confinement and inaccessibility. In “Cold Earth,” visitors to a remote community hear that a deadly pandemic is spreading across the rest of the world. Moss’s newest novel “The Fell,” which is coming out in the United States right as the world begins its third year of life with COVID, examines the effects of isolation and pandemic even more directly.

Single mother Kate and her teenage son Matt, residents of England’s Peak District, are required to quarantine following exposure to the virus. When Kate starts feeling overwhelmed, her son suggests she bake bread, start knitting or try an online workout. Instead, she breaks her legally-mandated lockdown to slip out of the house with her rucksack and take a walk along the moors. What harm could she do, she thinks, just walking outside away from other human beings?

Their elderly neighbor Alice has been isolating in her home for months following cancer treatment. Looking through her window, she watches Kate leave her yard but decides not to report the violation to the authorities. When night falls and Kate has still not returned, Matt becomes increasingly worried and, with Alice’s support, arranges for a search party to find his mother. Soon, a helicopter is flying overhead as emergency personnel comb the area with flashlights.

“The Fell” explores the way individual freedom conflicts with collective responsibility. Kate, an avid environmentalist who cares about the future of society enough to compost religiously and purchase only sustainable toothbrushes, has no intention of endangering anyone when she starts her hike. Nevertheless, her choice puts her community at risk. Alice wonders what boundaries she should maintain in her efforts to help Matt. Matt is unsure how to approach the investigators. And one of the emergency workers will have to touch Kate’s injured body, only to risk bringing the virus home to the son he has left behind.

These four characters narrate the book in individual sections full of extremely personal perspectives. They rarely appear in the same scenes, narrating only through their internal monologues. The intense separation between the characters reinforces the novel’s major theme of isolation. Perhaps the most significant dialogue in the book is when Kate, lying injured along the path through the moors, hallucinates a judgmental raven who voices both Kate’s suffering and her yearning for freedom.

Moss’s short novel crystalizes our shared moment of global danger and allows us to observe its different facets. The book’s ending, sadly, is not completely satisfying: after their traumatic experiences on the moors, the main characters don’t experience personal transformations or have new insights. Perhaps, though, this limitation is exactly what Moss is trying to say: that the continuing pandemic, combined with the climate crisis, has stripped us of any hope for resolution. “One of the things we’re learning, we of the end times,” Kate says to her raven, “is that humanity’s ending appears to be slow, lacking in cliffhangers or indeed any satisfactory narrative shape[PAGE 115].”

Short as it is, The Fell effectively expresses the anguish people all over the world felt during the Covid pandemic lockdowns. Who didn't feel the loneliness of isolation and wish for the kind of escape depicted in the novel? I felt as if Sarah Moss had gotten into my own mind and observed my feelings and experiences.

This is another pandemic novel detailing all the anxieties that COVID has wrought. When I read a book like this it makes me worry about the arts. So many distractions and pressure make it bound to end up reflected in books. It demonstrates how much we rely on the arts when times are bad but also how much it is threatened. As Emily St. John Mandel wrote in Station Eleven, “Survival alone is insufficient.”

In Sarah Moss’s The Fell, survival is what all the characters are focused on. Thinking about the pandemic, talking about the pandemic, until one is bouncing off the walls. We read these inner thoughts and flashback to March 2020. What is going to happen? When will this end? The path is uncertain.

Stir crazy, Kate impetuously decides to go for a walk at dusk. As darkness takes hold and she falls off a cliff. Having not brought her phone nor told anyone where she was going it’s a race against time to find her before the weather sets in. As the night wears on, her son, her neighbor, her rescuer, and a raven all worry about her situation. We hear their panicky thoughts.

Probably never a good time to read a book like this. I think many people have had this experience so it is relatable, but there isn’t any nuance here. Just the same worries as every character approach their own mental cliff. Just panic without any conclusion.

Favorite Passages

Wrong Side of the Road
turns out you can measure the painkilling properties of kindness, of the human voice,

Rescue People

You get off on being a hero, Liz used to say, you find it easier to go out there and rescue people and have them adore you and be all grateful than you do to stay in here and sit on your own sofa and talk to folk who know you. No, he said, I’m no hero, that’s not it, you don’t understand. I do it because I can, because we’ve all made bloody stupid mistakes in our time only mostly we’ve got away with it, so far. I do it because we all need saving from the consequences of our own idiocy once in a while. I do it because I’m not a hero, none of us is a hero.

Checks his Phone

This isn’t going to be all right, is it, it’s past the point where this can be all right. This is like the seconds between falling and landing, he thinks, you know how it’s going to end and you don’t want it to, all you can want now is for time to go more slowly than it does.

a novel focused on the lockdown.

i did. like the honestly of many things said in this.
and i did like how it did make great points in how too many people tried to make light of the situations of others just because they see those situations as better then their own. (but hasn’t it always been that way?)

the writing was easy to read and since the book is under 200 pages it’s a fast read.

but in my copy there wasn’t quotations when someone was speaking -maybe it’s a pet peeve of mine but i HATE it when a published work can’t even be punctuated correctly! Or maybe that’s my dyslexia that really has trouble with differentiating between inner and actual monologues without the easy to add help of punctuations/quotation marks.

so i didn’t love that especially in a book like that that has a lot of inner monologue and than all of a sudden is saying something.
it was alright but it would have been nicer to read with the addition of quotations that are really not that hard to add.


i also disliked the ending and how it left it all in a way that we don’t really know if anything changed for any of the people in the story.

in a way it fits because we get dropped into the story and leave it just as suddenly.
not what i love, i prefer it when i get a bit of a clearer understanding of where characters are left off with.

that doesn’t make it a bad ending for other readers, but doesn’t make it a great read for me either.


all in all i didn’t love this but it wasn’t bad.

it did show the troubles some people had during lockdown and it did capture that pretty well for the people that can’t seem to stay in their own homes for a few days at a time.


it’s a hard book to review and even harder to recommend

it’s a very melancholy kind of book, focusing very much on the hardships and troubles and what can’t be done and ist happening, instead of trying to find some positive.

so if you enjoy that? it’s a good book for you.

for example “ghost wall” by this author is very similar in style, tone and even the isolation but unhappiness of being isolated.
so if you loved that?
this will most likely also be a book that you will enjoy.


overall it’s a good book and i think a good momentum of this specific time we lived through, that in maybe 10 or so years will be more impactful of a read than it is now.
we all remember the lockdown very well now but in some years down the road a very harsh reminder of what kind of rules and regulations were set and what wasn’t allowed might be a bit of a shocking or horrific reminder and make this a more impactful and though provoking read as it is right now.

Already a fan of Sarah Moss from her brilliant "Ghost Wall," I was eager to read The Fell, a novel centering on a single day during November 2020. The Fell brings together Kate, a single mother in her 40s who is to be isolating due to Covid-19 exposure, her teenage son Matt, their recently widowed neighbor, Alice, and Rob, the rescuer who is sent to search the Fell at night after Kate breaks quarantine for a walk and doesn't return home.

The novel is slight, covering a brief amount of time and bouncing between the four main character perspectives, but perfectly captures the tedium of life in late 2020 when the days began to blend together in a sea of sameness. Moss's book covers the decluttering, the cooking, the baking, and all of the associated household tasks one undertook to stay busy with brilliant, suffocating accuracy. Kate's character, proves the most controversial, both in the book and in the other reviews online. She knowingly breaks her mandatory quarantine for a long walk outside, all the while rationalizing her decision. Because of this, some read this book as a pushback against mandates and restrictions, but Kate's decisions are not without their repercussions within the narrative and the safety and health risk she's placing others in is clearly expressed.

While this doesn't quite live up to Ghost Wall for me, this quick read will easily be held up as a future example of pandemic literature that captured life during these times with stunning accuracy.

Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the chance to read this eARC.

This was a lovely short book about people during the pandemic. When I started reading it, I wondered if it was too soon to read about the pandemic, but Sarah Moss did a great job of writing about the world at that time. I will definitely be recommending this book to others!

The Fell is a beautifully written, atmospheric and character driven novella that cleverly handles the effects the Covid quarantines had. Neither I, nor the book, are saying that the quarantines weren’t necessary, but they did have an effect on some people’s mental health. And Moss layers the story with multiple character pov’s, in a stream of conciseness style, so we can clearly see the impact it has taken on each character.

The Fell is cleverly navigated by one character, Kate’s, choice to leave her house and go for a walk in the secluded woods that sit behind her neighborhood. When Kate doesn’t come back in a timely manner due to her falling and injuring herself, we see the ripple effects this decision has on those around her. Kate has a teenage son, Matt, who isn’t sure who to ask for help in a Covid world and how to cope with the waiting. We also get a peek into the neighbor, Alice’s life, and how she is dealing with Covid and worrying about Kate. As well as a search and rescue worker and how the pandemic has impacted his team and his co parenting agreement with his ex-wife. There was also the wonderful use of a Raven and I appreciated the part he played in Kate’s story.

Moss uses her stunning writing to vividly recreate the part of England this book is set in and creates so much for what is in actuality a pretty bland story. A woman goes for a walk when she shouldn’t and injuries herself and those at home are worried. However, Moss created a richly layered, evocative and somewhat suspenseful tale about the anxiety, loneliness, and despair that were/are the reality for so many globally.

This one was just okay. No big revelations for me. The story dragged a little and I was waiting for something to happen that never did.

Sarah Moss's The Fell is the first novel I have read that accurately 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. The writing is strong however, I'm not a fan of pandemic novels. The novel is short and brief, however the main story of the mountain rescue wasn't very impactful

This did not grab me the way a work by Moss usually does. However it is well-written. I will read it again.

In this short novel, we are straight back in Lockdown at the peak of the Covid pandemic. Kate is meant to be isolating but she finds that she can't spend another minute stuck in her house. She lives in a beautiful part of the world, on the doorstep of mountains and hills and valleys and, up until now, nature has been her therapy. Would anyone even need to know if she went for an isolated walk? She's not going to see anyone, what harm could it be possibly do?

With these thoughts, Kate decides to go for a walk in the midst of lockdown with the hope of clearing her mind: she aims to be back before anyone even realises she's gone. This would have been ok if she hadn't fallen in the mountains, broken her leg and found herself unable to get home. Noone knows where she is, she's not even meant to be out, the night is getting colder and Kate finds herself in quite a predicament.

This raises some interesting questions about our own personal freedoms and liberties, especially when the decisions we make start to impact on other people around us. The son who doesn't know where you've gone, the mountain rescue team who have to go out looking for you when you get lost, the neighbour who saw you leave your house when you shouldn't but doesn't want to get you into trouble so keeps quiet. The hospital staff who will need to look after you after you broke the rules whilst they isolated from their families. At the same time, the author doesn't villify Kate either: all of us were caught in a situation that we didn't quite know how to deal with.

An interesting take on life at the peak of the pandemic and the mental strain that that isolation put on us.

Thank you to Netgalley, Sarah Moss and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

All of us can relate to the pressures of COVID isolation and people manage in different ways. For Kate, whose faltering mental health was amplified by her confinement, the urge to walk alone on the nearby fells was overwhelming. When she doesn't return home her teenaged son goes next door for help.
Sarah Moss mostly avoids making this a political novel - Kate and her son's actions are not deliberately rebelling against the rules of lockdown and the reader can empathise with their actions. The tension of Kate's deteriorating situation drives the plot forward to a conclusion which feels believable. Sarah Moss uses her characters' inner dialogues to beautiful effect as they consider how to live in the world. Readers of Ghost Wall will also enjoy this novel and I would recommend it highly to readers of thoughtful contemporary fiction.
My thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for a honest review

Sarah Moss does not let down in this pandemic book that looks at the social responsibility that plagues us in the midst of a pandemic.

I always love a Sarah Moss book. The pervasive uneasiness of her prose crawls under my skin and I just loved her newest!

DNF at around 30%

As much as I appreciate Moss’s style, I couldn’t survive the plot. First of all, maybe I read it a ‘wrong’ point – not during the lockdown (although I’m not so sure I’d enjoy that book then) but too early after it. I assume it might be a good novel to read in a few years, maybe, to rekindle some memories and struggles of that time. But it was too early for me and it was so frustrating I couldn’t get anything from the novel for myself. And secondly, what irritated the hell out of me, was the constant narration of ‘I’m not saying the quarantine is bad BUT.’ Yeah, I know being closed at home wasn’t anything nice and when I was under quarantine I didn’t have a house with a garden but two-room flat. Of course, I understand it was more difficult for some people because of their personalities and all but God, people were literally dying so arguing that social interaction was more important than health, I really don’t know. I’m not saying that Moss is making exactly that point but she’s close to it from the very beginning and maybe, as I said, it was too early to read such a book.

Too much frustration and nothing in return. I’m DNF-ing without remorse.

This is a satisfying page turner written mostly in a stream of consciousness voice. Sarah Moss successfully reveals the inner character of three neighbors. This uncomfortable self examination occurs during a stressful evening set on the Fell during the pandemic. I found myself continuing to think about the Raven messenger long after the book was finished. The bird looked over the lost protagonist and helped her sort through a lifetime of bad decisions - from her past. Her young adult son was left alone at home to wonder if he'd ever see his mother again. His internal struggles are with his own present life more than any worries about his missing parent. The neighbor seems to be worried and guilty about what she should be doing to help the currently motherless boy - yet the circumstances seem to put a lot of doubts on a healthy future for her beyond her finances. American English readers will enjoy how the culturally different British language spices up the story.

Thank you net galley and Macmillan Publishing for an ARC in exchange for a fair review.

Beautiful, stunning writing. Not my favorite novel but I am glad it introduced me to Moss as an author. I look forward to reading her other works soon.

The Fell follows a cast of characters surrounding a woman who goes missing after breaking COVID quarantine to take a walk on the moors by her home. As with all of Sarah Moss's books, The Fell is quite introspective, spanning several perspectives, and rooted in the storytelling of a community. Unfortunately, this one did not work for me.

I can't pinpoint exactly why, but I just did not give a hoot about any of the characters. None of them felt quite real or relatable, they bled together to a certain degree. I also just had a really hard time feeling anything for our characters, particularly our protagonist or as close to one as you could get, who bemoaned quarantine and lock down. I wasn't sure what kind of statement or observation Sarah Moss was trying to make with this, but it felt weirdly political and misguided, short sighted.

I'm shocked to be leaving this one such a low rating, but I did not enjoy it at all, frequently zoned out while reading it, and took way too long reading it for a book this short. I still have faith in Sarah Moss because I think she writes unique stories only she could pull off, but this one just missed the mark for me big time.

Didn’t like this as much as Summerwater, but still loved the writing. It’s a pandemic story, about some neighbors in the countryside, as Kate heads out on a ‘forbidden’ hill walk with dire consequences. The loneliness and isolation struggles are so relatable, and the way Moss writes inner monologues, with all the minutiae of everyday lives always feels so intimate. A quiet, affecting novel by a writer who captures the human condition with subtlety and ease.

Sarah Moss gives us the most human look at the pandemic in THE FELL. An honest, intimate portrayal of what it's like to be lonely together. Heartbreaking and hopeful. A must read.

The most fully realized characters on the bookstore at the moment. Alice is truly remarkable, and my favorite.

The stream of conscious writing us a favorite of mine, and Moss always puts her talents to the test. She succeeds here, more so than Summerwater, the reduced cast here really serving the story and building a true connection.