“Ripeness” by Sarah Moss ….(Literary, Contemporary, Historical: Italy, Ireland, United Kingdom,France,Israel), is *exquisitely* written. It’s one of my favorite novels this year….complex in the best of ways.
The emotional depth is substantial…thought-provoking, and powerful. Moss’s strength as a writer is astounding— her prose not only poetic but she delicately captures the bumblebee-blundering of characters.
Point is….
…..this is a dazzling imagined novel….filled with universal themes of sadness, fragility, tragedy, love, and loss.
The European setting is gorgeous….atmospheric….beautiful nature…smells…salivating tastes.

Edith, (73 years old; same age as me), is an English woman living in present day Ireland. She’s divorced and is now enjoying a relationship with a man named Gunter.
While grappling with her friend Meabh’s unexpected connection to a potential half-brother and her own feelings of being an outsider despite her long residency in Ireland, she is also reflecting back to 1960’s, Italy — a formative period in her life.
At age seventeen, Edith deferred a year of college (to study literature), at Oxford upon her Mother’s request to help her older pregnant sister, Lydia — in Italy — staying in her Italian villa. (there were servants, and a cook).
Lydia was a tall beautiful professional ballet dancer who planned to give the baby up for adoption immediately after birth.

The shifting between timelines is smooth — natural — easy to follow. Storytelling tales include family history, place, identity, sisterhood, parents, grandparents, treatment of refugees, being Jewish, ballet, political explorations, desires, academics, Oxford, literature, migration, secrets, choices, morality, freedom, childhood-coming-of-age memories, as well as adulthood issues about growing up.

The supporting cast is superb….but the story belongs to Edith …the protagonist in both timelines. It’s her head, her inner voice we spend most time with.

Note….I admit to real tears (around the 40% mark). There ‘are’ surprises that one could never see coming — and they’re emotional.

A few excerpts….
“She’s spent half her adult life, not saying what she thinks, not speaking as she finds, standing quietly in corners, compromising and colluding as fast as she learnt how. And here she is crude, English, colonial. And right. What has she done to Meabh, to their friendship, but also what else could she have done? There are, it seems, lines she will not cross. There are, must be, limits”.

“In the way of siblings, she and I were stuck with ourselves and each other. I kept accompanying her and after a couple of days she stopped protesting. I took a book and sat in the hayloft, but it was Dickens and mostly, I watched her: barre, plies, floor, some of it looked alarming because her belly was so big and her body is so small, but I could see that she was making accommodations, not stretching as far or balancing as delicately as she had even a few weeks ago, not jumping or spinning. Her movement had lost the spring and coil I’d last seen at the final performance. She was going through the motions”.

“None of us is truly autonomous, and none of us truly belongs. There are no border guards at the chambers of your heart.”

We’re all wanderers. We all live dangerously; the brave thing is to know it.”

“There are as many tragedies and comedies as entries in the census; I had not, of course, yet learnt that tragedy and comedy, plot and endings, are merely the tools of fiction, fairy tale. Ripeness, not readiness, is all. Life has no form, you don’t get to choose. I shivered”.

“But your past, my past, is irreplaceable. Storytelling isn’t mending. To be alive is to be in uncertainty, which suggests to me that Keats was right, that certainty is death.”

“This is the only reality: the atoms of each of us come together for a brief while here and now, the pump and flicker of our hearts, dancing our bodies and our brains on the surface of our broken planet in this moment”.

LOVE this book …..
….I highly recommended it!!!
Perhaps make a plate of purple grapes — sponge cake — or Italian biscuits with your favorite cup of tea……then curl up in a comfy chair….read, nibble, sip…..
Moss’s work is illuminated in warmth and delicacy of her prose.

I loved The Fell and Summerwater and feel Moss' strength is in writing about character's inner monologues in a hugely relatable way. Both of those books worked as the characters' thoughts made up the bulk of the prose.

Ripeness felt like there was too much going on - each of these aspects are things I like in a novel, but this particular mix felt rambly and muddled. The nature writing was rich and evocative, the characterisation interesting and surprising, the issues were relevant. However, all these things felt like the prose was competing for my attention. It was too much.

This combined with a very slow pace which seemed to lack intention and direction made this fall short of Moss' previous insightful, compelling reads.

This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

Ripeness is a descriptive, character-driven novel set across two timelines in Italy and Ireland. It explores hidden identities, family secrets, and social and cultural expectations in the 1960s. The writing beautifully conveys emotion and a strong sense of time and place, but I found the pace too slow for me; it’s definitely a slow burn rather than a dramatic read, but I can still appreciate how beautifully it is written and others will appreciate this I am sure. I received a free advanced review copy from NetGalley and this is my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the opportunity to read Ripeness by Sarah Moss which Is, as to be expected, an exquisitely written story.

Ripeness questions what it means to belong somewhere, what home really is. For those who are forcibly removed from places torn by war, those who’ve been adopted by their parents, and those who have chosen to create a home somewhere else.
Identity is something blurry, bendable, weak to pressure. While our rules around nationality are not. It’s a messy thing to consider, but Moss has created a beautiful narrative to think it through.

I loved getting to know Edith through two timelines. Moss’ writing is absolutely fantastic, especially her descriptions of the land around the characters. A wonderful story I didn’t want to leave but didn’t leave me wanting more as the ending was beautiful.

Great writer but I really could not get into this story. Thanks for the opportunity to read but it was just not for me. Good Luck with the boo.

First off, a thousand thanks to FS&G, the author and Netgalley for the privilege of reading this advance copy of Moss's magnificent new book.

As I have read all eight of her previous novels and enjoyed them all, plus one of her two memoirs, I suppose I was predisposed to love this one also. I am not sure if I can articulate how, but the author has noted this is a new direction in her writing and I agree - somehow, if even possible, with new clarity and deeper insight, richer and more humanistic.

There is a lot to unload here, but basically, as the synopses above states, it is the story of 73-year-old Edith Braithwaite, a recently divorced English woman who has settled in Ireland. The chapters alternate between a 3rd-person POV in 2023, detailing Edith's present life, with a 1st person narration by Edith, reflecting back on her summer of 1967, when she was sent to Italy to attend to her older sister's pregnancy. We eventually learn that she is writing in the autumn of her life a memoir of that time for her nephew, who was given up at birth for adoption, just in case he should ever want to find out about his first week of life, even though she has no idea where he is or what might have become of him. It all comes together quite movingly and beautifully at the end, an affirmation of the fragility and importance of knowing one's place in the world.

Since I ALSO have an ARC of that 2nd memoir, that came out a few months ago, I am going to read that next, as I want even more of Moss's exquisite prose.