It feels strange to read novels, or a novella in this case, that refer to the early days of the pandemic. Even though the pandemic is not over, the early days of wiping down groceries and staying indoors seem so long ago. This novella takes us into the minds of Kate, her son Matt, their neighbor Alice, and rescue agent Rob, after Kate goes missing after taking a walk on the fell one evening. Although the book is short, Moss captures the anxiety some of us felt at the thought of being asked to stay home indefinitely. For an introvert like myself, who didn’t find staying home to be much of a hardship, it was interesting to read about a reaction different than my own.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am fascinated by the ways that the COVID 19 pandemic has worked its way into our art in 2022 and so I was eager to pick up The Fell. More novella than novel, Moss zeros in on the affects of being isolated from one another during the pandemic. Our main character, Kate, is in quarantine with her teenaged son, Matt, following a COVID exposure at work. Feeling suffocated by being inside, Kate leaves her house to go for a walk on the moor by herself. When she doesn't return, Matt begins to worry that she's not coming back. Their neighbor, Alice, sees Kate leave and also becomes concerned for Matt. What started as a quick escape from quarantine turns into an elaborate mountain rescue.

Despite the outward drama of the scenario Moss has created, The Fell is an interior-focused book. Each chapter alternates between the four characters: Kate, Matt, Alice, and Rob (one of the rescuers). Their stream-of-consciousness narration reveals the struggles of the pandemic, particularly when stuck at home to avoid spreading the disease. Kate's POV was masterfully done, as she struggles to survive on the moor.

This book isn't anti-lockdowns or quarantines, but it is honest about what happens to mental health when people are asked to stay home for their physical well-being. I really enjoyed being inside the heads of all of these characters as they grappled with their feelings over the course of a few hours.

My only complaint here is that the book was too short. I found myself wanting a little more from the story and the characters by the end.

I get that Kate, or anyone for that matter, might think a walk might not violate the strict guidelines for lockdown but I had a hard time getting past how irresponsible she was in this novella of the pandemic. Irresponsible not only for breaking quarantine but even more for not taking a cell phone with her. No one should go trekking without a means of communication these days. And, she's left her teen son Matt behind without any information about where she's gone. Of course he panics and of course a neighbor calls the police. This takes place over the night she's missing but the thoughts of the various characters will take you back and forth a bit. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's well written but it just wasn't for me.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have read a few COVID-centric novels in the last year, as I am not opposed to seeing how other people are choosing to depict a reality we all with was fictional. This was quick, intense, and left me thinking quite a bit about how I really have felt over the last few years.

It's late in the first year of the pandemic in England. Kate is restless after being quarantined with her son and decides to break the law and go for a walk, but she falls and thus a rescue ensues. I saw reviews saying that this was a book that promoted not wearing a mask and not quarantining and obeying various guidelines, etc, but I think that's a misreading. I think Moss is just exploring what we all went through and how there's no good way to have gone through it -- lots of people have experienced the absolute worst years of their lives. Death, darkness, exhaustion, mourning. Some people have merely been inside for a bit, maybe not even at all. She's showing that compassion exists, but we often get it wrong, misplace it, forget that it's an alright thing to feel.

During the quick read, I was often mad, annoyed, and exasperated with Kate and even the other voices we hear -- the elderly neighbor, Kate's son, the rescue volunteer who finds solace in his job, though it takes him to dark places. But I saw my own thoughts in their musings. I want to read about how other people have lived through this, and Moss delivered for me.

4 stars.

Thank you to the author, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This novella is short, but powerful. It engages with the reality of the pandemic, lockdown and the isolation that these events cause - something all of us are dealing with to varying degrees. The story shows four different perspectives: Kate – a single mother, Matt - her son, Alice - the widowed neighbor recovering from cancer, and Rob - a volunteer mountain rescuer . Kate and Matt are quarantined due to having been exposed to a COVID case, but when the claustrophobia gets the better of her, Kate decides to walk up into the deserted moors. She is spotted going by Alice, who of course is also isolating due to her health vulnerabilities. When Kate doesn't return as darkness falls, Matt alerts the authorities. Meanwhile Kate is in serious trouble after a fall, and Rob and his colleagues scramble to find her. The story is told in a bit of a meandering way, each character has a distinct voice and shares their thoughts, and yet the tension and danger of the situation come across extremely well. I'm not sure why some seem to think the message of this book is against masking, social distancing etc. - on the contrary, I found it spoke out clearly for all the measures instituted but also looked at what this cost us psychologically.

Before you pick up a Sarah Moss you must clear the decks, because you will not move until you have read every last word. I have read quite a few covid related books now but this one accurately portrays the claustrophobia that was felt during lockdown. It is eerie to revisit the early days of hand washing hysteria and neighbourhood paranoia.

This short novella is about a woman who is supposed to be quarantining for 14 days, but she has had enough of the isolation and she heads out for a hike that takes a bad turn. Very introspective as the narrative focuses on the inner thoughts of a handful of characters. It took me a little while to get used to the stream of consciousness narration, but the author accurately captured a lot of the fear and panic that occurred in the beginning of the pandemic. I received an ARC from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a good book, a very quick read as well. Kate and her son Matt live in a small English village that is in a National park, their house backs onto a nature trail that leads up to a ridge. Kate is in quarantine, a close contact with a covid infected person has her off work and stuck inside with her son for two weeks. After one week she's stir crazy and decides near evening to go out for a walk on the nature trail, she won't be gone long she figures, back before anyone knows she's gone. Alice, her neighbour, sees her leave but decides not to tell anyone, the village is small and everyone would know, including the police and the fine for breaking quarantine is hefty. Matt is a gamer and is usually in front of his computer gaming away the day and night, unless he's hungry, then he ventures down to see what's for dinner and discovers his mom gone. Alice, Kate and Matt are the primary point of view of what happens, a rescue person, sent out when Matt finally tells Alice that he's worried and Alice alerts the authorities, searches for Kate. Kate has fallen and is badly injured, a broken leg for sure. The thoughts of each person around their lives, how covid has affected them, how they have arrived at the situation they are currently in, is told in separate chapters. I have not read anything by this author previously and I found this to be a very good book, one I would recommend. Thank you to #Netgalley and #Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC.

Then Covid came......

This gives the impression that 'one' thing happened. Seen from afar then yes it's true. But how Covid interacted with each and everyone of us at different times creates lots of different 'Covids', different stories, different angles, different size.

Each story comes with its own pains and joys, this one too. How the quiet country village life can turn into neighbours hounding you to wear your mask or keeping track of your vaccination status or when you went out and for how long. How people just making ends meet before Covid are now in really dire straights and one small blow will flatten them. How touch becomes a sought after thing, and you might even start noting on your diary when you were touched last.

An ARC gently given by author/publisher via Netgalley

Sarah Ready, Sara Goodman Confino, Sarah. E. Ladd and now Sarah Moss— this year I seem to be picking books by the author’s first name! ;)

The Fell by Sarah Moss is a much-needed look into people’s psyche as the current pandemic keeps bringing up more variants and would confine us to our homes for the rest of our lives if it could. The novel has four POVs- that of Rob, Matt, his mom Kate and their neighbour Alice. Matt and Kate are self-isolating as someone at Kate’s cafe was tested positive for COVID. Alice being a cancer patient is considered Extremely Vulnerable and cannot step outside her house. Her kind neighbours do her grocery shopping for her. One evening, aka decides that enough is enough and ventures out for a little trek, one where she wouldn’t meet— or infect— a single soul. However, she is not back after hours, and Matt and Alice seek help find her. Rob and his colleagues at the mountain rescue scour the fell for Kate.

The author has done a brilliant job in highlighting the human need for touch and the company of other people, even if extremely vulnerable. In spite of getting the need for the regulations, most people would rather die of COVID than of loneliness. There is a limit to how long we can put up with ourselves.

Some people need others but some need a bit of fresh air. Being locked up inside four walls is no fun. Kate can feel the mountain beckoning as she goes out for a little walk, and cannot stop. Just a little further, she thinks, and keeps going forward. The chapters where the mountain rescue is searching for her were really intense and kept me on the edge. It was even more nerve racking for me because just this week, a 19-year-old was rescued from a dangerous mountain after 45 hours by the Indian army. He had to stand for hours in an area tamed by wild bears and elephants, after he was injured and ran out of food and water.

A wonderful book, 4.5 stars!

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the ARC.

Such an interesting concept! I really loved the premise of this book but the writing style ultimately wasn't for me. Some passages seemed to drag on for quite a while, but I did enjoy the story overall.

I've been left sorely disappointed by the early crop of Covid novels, including Sarah Hall's <i>Burntcoat</i>, and it would be sacrilege to even mention the existence of Gary Shteyngart's painfully unfunny satire <i>Our Country Friends</i> in the same paragraph as earnest, good-faith literary efforts like this one.

[clears throat for paragraph break]

So I'm just going to review <i>The Fell</i> as the third of Sarah Moss's shortish novels I've read in the past two years. This seemed much slighter, compared to either <i>Ghost Wall</i> or <i>Summerwater</i>. She's working with a narrower canvas here: entering into four streams of consciousness over a 24-hour period in a Peak District village during the winter lockdown of 2020-21. But there's a drudge-y sameness to these subjectivities: Kate, a 40ish quarantine breaker, single parent, and furloughed cafe waitress with possible Covid exposure; Alice, her wealthy retired neighbor; Matt, her gaming-addicted teenage son (whose voice just fell flat on the page); and Rob, a volunteer from the local mountain rescue team with his own messed-up family life.

Perhaps Moss was just dramatizing the horrible endless kitchen-sink drudgery and banality of those days spent cooking, housecleaning, and online, but while I could personally relate to surviving months of Groundhog Days, I didn't want to relive them, and these characters' experiences with loneliness and isolation just felt flat and banal to me.

In real life, I would have immediately leapt to sanctimonious judgment about brazen breakers of the Covid rules who thoughtlessly inflict their virality upon the old, infirm, and immunosuppressed, in radical denial of the common good. But I will admit found some measure of empathy for Kate, a vegetarian hippie who doesn't fit the profile of the right-wing anti-masker next door.

Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sharing an ARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Encapsulates well the claustrophobia and mental health struggles of the pandemic. The protagonist is meant to be in isolation after being identified as a close contact, but halfway through her time she cannot take being closed inand decides to go for a night walk up the Fell at night, so she will not be near others. It is a selfish decision as she leaves her son at home, her at risk neighbour is in a panic and or course rescue services are then alerted and having to attend. On the other hand, the flow of consciousness writing shows an increasingly frenetic mind
.the protagonist is not in a healthy state of mental health. This becomes worse when she falls and delirium conjures up the voice of a bird as her conscious. The book does highlight the issue of how the pandemic has affected a nation psychologically and raises the questions about whether more could have been done to protect mental health as well as physical. A short, emotive read that can ve read in one sitting and will definitely raise some discussions. As this is dealing with a real-time pandemic issue, I imagine it could generate some heated opinions, especially regarding the protagonist and her decision to leave the house - her mental health vs the risk against others. #thefell #Sarahmoss #netgalley

I liked the fast pace and progressive mental stumbles of each character. Felt like the story ended abruptly and could have rounded up some loose ends.

Set in England’s Peak District during the first year of the pandemic, The Fell centres around a woman called Kate who breaks quarantine to embark on a walk in the hills. She leaves behind her teenage son, Matt, in the house where the pair have been isolating together and their elderly neighbour, Alice. The events that unfold are told from the point of view of all three, as well as that of an additional characters whose identity I won’t disclose here, since it would reveal some of the plot.

Sarah Moss is a writer whose books I am constantly drawn back to. She has a unique ability to hone in on the minutiae of every day life in order to make broader statements about the nature of the world we live in today. After all, what could be more current than a novel set during a pandemic that is still ongoing even as we speak. Moss perfectly captures the incessant restlessness of lockdown as her characters wade from one monotonous task to another, an atmosphere of weary confinement lingering on every page. The stream of consciousness that is characteristic of Moss’s work, proves an ideal device for the exploration of varying reactions to sudden isolation and the uncertainty of the road ahead.

In some ways it was too close to the bone for me, and probably wouldn’t have felt as such if the story had eventually progressed to a hopeful conclusion, or simply a less abrupt one. I felt that there was something missing from this commentary of our lived reality and I’m not sure that it will be possible to comprehend the full impact of the pandemic without more hindsight than would have been available at the time this novel was written. This is merely a personal preference though. I think that any pandemic novels I read will feel like a grasp in the dark for a good few years yet, but that’s the only reason why this fell a little flat for me.

Moss remains an author who reflects the myriad complexities of our lives back to us in a way that is thought-provoking and irresistibly jarring, making The Fell an imperfectly perfect representation of the times we live in.

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC.

This review was also posted on Instagram via @victoriasliterarythings

First off, my thanks to FS&G and NetGalley for an ebook ARC of this novel. I am always excited to read anything Sarah Moss publishes.
It appears that Moss uses the same formula for each of her novels, which is not necessarily a bad thing. A small town in Northern England, on the edge of Nature, being gentrified (although here those outsiders don't play a major role in the plot). We are introduced into the current moment of the lives of handful of characters. In the first third of the novel we slowly learn who they are, their backgrounds, and how they connect to one another. This is done through each chapter presenting the interior monologues of each of the characters. Nature is invigorating and beautiful, but also dangerous. At times I felt like I was reading a fictionalized Robert Macfarlane (again, a good thing).
This short novel (192 pp) is set in the time of COVID. Published in England in November 2021, pre-vaccine, it may already be a bit outdated by the time is is published in the US (March 2022). She makes some good points about both sides of British policy regarding isolation. And over this brief book she fills in the 4 main characters well.
This isn't Moss' best work, but I am glad that she wrote this about the COVID pandemic and its effect on individual lives, and that I was given the opportunity to read it. Whenever she publishes another book, I'll be there to pick it up!

I'd like to thank Netgalley for an arc of what I assume will be the American release of "The Fell" by Sarah Moss, due to arrive in early March.

Whereas my experience with lockdowns hasn't been quite the same as what has been happening in Britain, the feelings that the characters feel are fairly universal. The constant stagnation brought on by the length of this pandemic, the way life is put on hold and it can lead to feelings of frustration and a fatigue of the constant holding pattern we're all stuck in.

I loved the characters that Moss created. I particularly loved Annie. The moment when she was yelling out to Matt, and they were being so cautious, trying to connect and care when they couldn't; struck me as particularly poignant.

I will say that the ending left me a bit wanting. I felt like there wasn't a full resolution, and I was still left in the limbo, much like the characters. I think (or at least I hope), that was Moss's point. This overwhelming feeling brought on by the pandemic seems to be never-ending, and we're all just stuck waiting for the satisfying conclusion.

Oof. Wow. Writing this review has just left me feeling some sort of way.

A single mom going stir-crazy under quarantine wanders out into the hills and goes missing. I enjoyed this book but would be reluctant to recommend it as we're still dealing with COVID

I thoroughly enjoyed this novella, at only 131 pages, it certainly packs a punch.
Told from four protagonists POV we get into their hearts and souls. Written with intimately relatable characters, they could be your own friends and neighbour’s.
I wasn’t sure if I was ready for a Covid lockdown read, but reading this was like having a conversation with a couple of friends.
The author does not waste a word! It’s not about the pandemic. It’s about love, friendships, relationships, judgment, mistakes and regrets. It’s deeply reflective and thought provoking. Beautiful, atmospheric and evocative prose.
I felt the ending was a bit rushed … abrupt, obviously the author's intent. I wanted more, but I always do with a great story!
Out 1 March 2022
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

Is there any other book in this universe that can better articulate how we all felt during the month long quarantine? I guarantee not.

The Fell is more of an introspective book than a thriller playing with conscience and thought processes, promptly pushing the problem at hand to a backseat. A random raven flying across the fell becomes a spirit guide and the protagonist imagines justifying herself to it. It’s quirky and wild. And it’s everything you’ve felt when you were cooped up in the house for too long.

Kate is supposed to quarantine with her son, Matt. But the solitary confinement is taking a toll on her. When she couldn’t take it any longer, she set out on a stroll.

Matt, confused at his Mom’s sudden disappearance tries to remain calm.

Alice, Kate’s next door neighbor is struggling with breast cancer. She decides not to call the authorities on her neighbor but is fraught with worry when Kate doesn’t return.