I enjoyed this lovely little story even more than I expected. The book alternated between present day, post-COVID Edith, who was in her 70's, a content divorcee, and ruminated on one summer in particular. The other half zeroed in on that 1960s summer in Italy where she tagged along with her pregnant 19-year-old sister, Lydia, as they waited for her to give birth and hand off the baby to nuns. Though they were together only briefly, Edith fell for the baby boy more than she ever expected to, and the book was a letter (of sorts) in case her nephew ever went looking for his birth family.

The writing was great, the story moved along, and I was left with a lot to think about. I've never read the author before, but I'll certainly look out for her in the future.

*Ripeness* by Sarah Moss is sharp, intimate, and layered with the kind of quiet observations that stay with you. Moss writes with precision, capturing the small, seemingly ordinary details of life and revealing the tensions, humor, and tenderness hidden within them. Her prose feels both effortless and deliberate, pulling you into moments that are as much about what’s unsaid as what’s spoken.

What makes this book so compelling is how it explores human connection—how relationships shift and stretch under the weight of time, change, and unspoken truths. There’s a subtle power in the way Moss lets her characters breathe, stumble, and surprise you. It’s thoughtful, wry, and beautifully constructed, the kind of book that lingers long after the final page.

Sarah Moss is a must read for me, and this really hit. Just beautiful writing. I will be picking up a hard copy of this one.

Edith, a divorced woman in her seventies, is the daughter of a French Holocaust survivor and an English farmer. In the 1960s, her mother sent 17-year-old Edith to Italy to help her sister through her final months of pregnancy and, ultimately, to make the call to a convent signaling that the baby was ready for adoption. In the present day, Edith lives in Ireland, where, despite many years of residency, she still feels like an outsider.

Sarah Moss is ambitious in her cultural commentary. There are observations on immigration and belonging, Jewishness, rape and unwanted pregnancy, the Ukrainian refugee crisis, ballet culture, and so on. Because of this, the book was interesting but dense, the present day timeline not working quite as well as the 1960s chapters. That said, I still enjoyed the novel on the whole.

Sarah Moss’s Ripeness is a quiet, layered novel that weaves together two timelines with characteristic intelligence and restraint. Set partly in 1960s rural Italy and partly in present-day Ireland, the novel follows Edith—first as a dutiful teenager sent to assist her pregnant sister Lydia through a complex and emotionally fraught birth, and later as a mature woman navigating a friend's unexpected family revelation.

Moss is at her best when writing about the subtleties of obligation, memory, and the undercurrents in female relationships. The sections in Italy are especially evocative, filled with tension, sunlight, and the heavy silence of things left unsaid. Edith's youth and the decisions she’s asked to carry out on behalf of others create a sense of unease that lingers well into the present-day narrative.

However, while the prose is typically sharp and the themes compelling—particularly the question of who gets to make life-altering decisions and why—the novel occasionally feels underdeveloped emotionally. The present-day plotline, involving Maebh’s surprise sibling and Edith’s role in unearthing that family mystery, doesn’t land with the same weight as the earlier story. There’s a detachment that makes it hard to fully invest in the characters' current dilemmas. Some of this may be due to the fact that the book feels overstuffed. Lots of issues are mixed up in this book—it deals with refugees, migration and immigration, Jewishness, rape culture, abortions, Irishness, the Magdalene Laundries, the war in Ukraine, toxic ballet culture, and much more. It often felt like too much and made Edith a frustrating character.

A thoughtful, readable novel that explores the long reach of the past, Ripeness doesn’t quite deliver the emotional payoff it promises, but Moss’s elegant writing and insight into the lives of women still make it worth the read.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for priding me with a copy of this book. It will be published on September 9, 2025.

Ripeness by Sarah Moss is a well-crafted and engaging read. The writing is thoughtful, and the story unfolds at a steady pace, keeping the reader interested. I appreciated the depth of the characters and the way the themes were explored. Overall, a solid book that I would recommend to others looking for a compelling literary experience.

This is my first read of this author.
Edith is narrating this story, she is in her early seventies and lives in Ireland….she tells her story in two strands.. one present day not long after the pandemic, and of herself at 17 living in rural England, the family farm., and being sent to Italy to be with her 19 yr old pregnant sister.
Lydia, the sister, is a ballerina and Edith will stay with her until after the baby is born and nuns come and take the baby to be adopted as prearranged and then Edith will go to Oxford.
Present day .. Edith is happily divorced quite some years now and spends time with her lover, Gunter.. and she also has a close friend Meabh.
Edith is writing the story down (to be opened upon her death) to that baby nephew of hers (a grown man now) in case he ever comes looking.
I really enjoyed this story and it is also filled with thoughts on nationalism, displacement, belonging…where is your place in this world?
It gives you a lot to think about.

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

eh. i’m afraid that i didn’t really gel with this one – i just found it a little grating and struggled to connect with the main character, which is often a dealbreaker for me in this sort of books. the writing was nice enough, but yeah. not my favourite.

I’ve enjoyed other books by this author more. This new one has a dreariness about it, despite the value of its themes - identity, belonging, finding home.
Both the alternating narrative streams seem prolonged, too earnest. And while Edith is a decent character (in the moral sense) she’s not compelling. Her pregnant sister Lydia is distinctly rebarbative and the whole Italian episode feels drawn out and simply dull.
It’s a neat package, pulling together various abandoned babies and children. There’s thought behind the book. But as a story, it just seems flat. And less ingenious than earlier work.

I didn't connect with Sarah Moss's new novel in the same way as her other novels. It lacks the shocks and overt moments of violence that define her other books. It's a chillier book. A book about what it means to be a woman and not a mother. A book about why some women don't make natural mothers. Edith, like her mother, is a leaver not a stayer. Edith feels pretty detached in general.
There's a lot of tragedy hidden in the book. Tragedy that feels unexplored. Edith goes to look after her pregnant sister in the 1960's. Her sister has the baby, and then terrible things happen to her sister. I felt like the book petered out a bit at the end.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. In 1960’s Italy, Edith, in the summer before she starts Oxford, has been summoned to babysit her older sister Lydia who is about to give birth to a child she doesn’t want and has no plans to keep. For Lydia this is a small speed bump in her dancing career, but Edith is too young to understand it all. The novel alternates chapters with that story with a much older Edith now living alone in Dublin. We find out about the life she’s lived, but also understand why she is so eager to help her friend unite with a brother she never knew about that was adopted and sent to America.

This one is giving me Booker vibes. I feel like this one has many things in common with Stone Yard Devotional, which is equally exceptional. Both books feature a woman reflecting on her past and particularly on moments where they didn’t act.

There is teenage Edith who is sent to Italy to stay with her older sister who is living in exile from their parents and town and who is hiding the fact that she is pregnant. Edith is curious and yet she is very uneasy in this environment. She tries her best. This Edith is in the first person narrative.

Then there is older Edith, grappling with aging, friendship and what it means to tell or withhold the truth. This Edith contemplates issues like migration, marriage and divorce and displacement and belonging. She is unfailingly honest and doesn’t care if you like her or not. This Edith is in the third person narrative.

The writing is quite lyrical, atmospheric and full of passages worthy of highlighting. The use of two narratives to reflect the differences in the two timelines as Edith matures is very clever.

This review is kind of vague, but I don’t want to spoil too much. I just feel that this story has so much meaning and is the type of book that deserves more than one reading to grasp all the nuance.

Suffice it to say, this one is a winner for me. 4.5 stars.

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC.

It was so lovely to be back with Sarah Moss, and while Ripeness felt different to the other works I’ve read (Ghost Wall, Summerwater & The Fell), it still had her trademark insightfulness and gentleness, she still offered up a beautiful read.

Ripeness is told over dual timelines, through the eyes of Edith, from 1960’s Italy and current day Ireland. As a younger woman she is sent to Italy in the summer holidays to care for her elder sister through the final weeks of her pregnancy. As an older woman, she’s living in happiness in Ireland.

While this was a slower read, this isn’t a criticism of the book. I loved the pace, it forced me to slow down and immerse myself with the places and times, the characters and their lives. Throughout the novel is the question of identity and belonging, from Edith’s four passports and immigrant parents, to her sister and unborn child, the future home of said child still an uncertainty. Moss is an assured author, and Ripeness beautifully written. The narrative is entwined with current issues, something we’ve seen from her in the past, and here again is done so well. Gentle, quiet, yet full of depth, this is a book for savouring, and one I enjoyed very much.

In gorgeous, dense prose, Moss uses dual timelines to show us MC Edith in her current, happy life in Ireland as a single elder, and a few weeks she spent as a 17 year old with her older ballerina sister, who was sent away to Italy to birth her illegitimate baby. Seemingly unrelated choices, but actually connected in the themes of family, outsider status, belonging, motherhood explored as we go back and forth in time. The stream of conscious style and lack of quotation marks will irk som readers, but worked for me once I got into the rhythm of the story. I will be thinking about this one for some time to come, and seeking out more from this author. Thank you to @picador and @netgalley for the eARC!

This story begins slowly, set in the 1970's, this is a story of adult siblings, one who is a dancer who is pregnant, and her sister who comes to visit and ends up staying in order to help as there is a baby who will soon be born. But, the pregnant sister wants nothing to do with the baby even before it is born, and so the sister cares for both her sister, as well as the newborn infant when the time comes.

This story reveals the flaws and differences between the two sisters, one who is only interested in what she wants to do with her life, and not the child she is carrying, and the other who wants
the child to belong to a loving family.


Pub Date: 09 Sep 2025


Many thanks for the opportunity to read 'Ripeness' by Sarah Moss

I really liked this book and I like Sarah Moss’s writing. She brings her characters to life and her story is descriptive. This is definitely a slow burn but that’s not a bad thing.

I desperately wanted to like this but for the life of me I could not get into it. I found the pacing to be slow, I had a very difficult time with the lack of quotations, and I just could. Not. Get. Into. It. The writing saved it from a. 1 star for me and this is a very subjective review!! I just ultimately couldn’t get invested into the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the free ebook ARC in exchange for my honest opinion of this novel. The novel follows a woman named Edith during two different time periods in her life, with each chapter alternating from first-person narrative in the past from when she was a teenager attending to her (older) pregnant sister in Italy, and when she is currently in her 70's in Ireland, helping a friend through a sudden family revelation. It's difficult to like adult Edith at times because, being privy to her inner thoughts, we hear her judging even those closest to her. Ironically I found myself judging her, who'd never really worked, for judging the working mother who was late to yoga, and then it clicked that we're all guilty of it and that's the point. That's why adult Edith felt so real at times, because she's flawed but also recognizes her flaws and does try hard to correct them. Teenage Edith, who is terribly neglected by her narcissistic mother, is much more sympathetic.

The pacing at the beginning is so slow that I considered giving up on the book multiple times. I'm glad that I didn't, but I came quite close to it. The writing was absolutely gorgeous and so clever, witty, and touching at times that there were moments I actually teared up, or chuckled, or paused, or highlighted parts in my Kindle for the first time.

“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.