The Fell - by Sarah Moss (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A slim, tense page-turner . . . I gulped The Fell down in one sitting." --Emma Donoghue, author of The Pull of the Stars

From the award-winning author of Ghost Wall and Summerwater, Sarah Moss's The Fell is a riveting novel of mutual responsibility, personal freedom, and the ever-nearness of disaster.

At dusk on a November evening, a woman slips through her garden gate and turns up the hill. Kate is in the middle of a two-week mandatory quarantine period, a true lockdown, but she can't take it anymore--the closeness of the air in her small house, the confinement. And anyway, the moor will be deserted at this time. Nobody need ever know she's stepped out.

Kate planned only a quick walk--a stretch of the legs, a breath of fresh air--on paths she knows too well. But somehow she falls. Injured, unable to move, she sees that her short, furtive stroll will become a mountain rescue operation, maybe even a missing person case.

Sarah Moss's The Fell is a story of mutual responsibility, personal freedom, and compassion. Suspenseful, witty, and wise, it asks probing questions about how close so many live to the edge and about who we are in the world, who we are to our neighbors, and who we become when the world demands we shut ourselves away.

Review Quotes

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022

"If there was any doubt whether the pandemic would inspire literature that will endure beyond the crisis, The Fell, a slender but illuminating lightning strike of a book, should put that to rest."
--Lisa Henricksson, Air Mail

"Sarah Moss delivers . . . Thought-provoking and timely."
--Angela Haupt, Time

"A study in repression and displacement, Moss's defiantly uneventful novel [is] a psychological thriller."
--Lidija Haas, The New York Times Book Review

"Humorous, lyrical, and reflective."
--Erica Ezeifedi, Book Riot

"[The Fell] exhibits truths and contradictions, and it contains a succinct, self-contained story that, simultaneously, encapsulates an author's whole oeuvre."
--Marcie McCauley, Chicago Review of Books

"The Fell explores the way individual freedom conflicts with collective responsibility . . . [It] crystalizes our shared moment of global danger and allows us to observe its different facets."
--Hannah Joyner, Star Tribune

"Expertly woven . . . This portrait of humans and their neighboring wild creatures in their natural landscape and in their altered world is darkly humorous, arrestingly honest, and intensely lyrical . . . A triumph of economy and insight."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"The Fell is a funny, savage novel about the very recent past, and seems to do the impossible: hold a story that is still unfolding immobile enough to integrate into fiction."
--Emma Brockes, The Guardian

"Astonishing . . . [Moss's] work is as close to perfect as a novelist's can be."
--Sarah Ditum, The Times

"[A novel] with great evocative power . . . Piercing."
--Laura Hackett, The Sunday Times

"A page-turner descended from the classic literature of the dire straits and extreme solitude of shipwreck, a cousin to Emma Donoghue's Room."
--Ellen Prentiss Campbell, Washington Independent Review of Books

"There is always the electric touch of danger lacing its fingers through [Moss's work] . . . It's the end of the world, seen from a particular angle only the incisive Sarah Moss could show us."
--Katie Yee, Lit Hub

"A swift, nuanced tale about converging lives over the course of one evening during a pandemic lockdown . . . Timely and moving."
--Leah Strauss, Booklist

"Quiet yet deeply moving . . . Moss shines in creating the stream of consciousness of fully-realized, distinct characters."
--Kelly Roark, Newcity Lit

"One of the very best British novelists writing today about contemporary life--if anyone can justify writing a pandemic novel, she's the woman for the job."
--Lucy Scholes, The Telegraph

"Indeed, one of the most profoundly unsettling attributes of The Fell is the way it questions that elemental source of human succour: storytelling . . . 'Accumulating dread' is what Moss atomises so brilliantly here but it should be added that this is also a very funny book."
--Hepzibah Anderson, The Observer

"Absorbing . . . Ingeniously done . . There's an intoxicating flow to much of the writing . . . A humane, thoughtful reflection on the lockdown experience."
--Roger Cox, The Scotsman

"A slim, tense page-turner that captures the weird melancholia of locked-down life but also the precious warmth of human connection. I gulped down The Fell in one sitting."
--Emma Donoghue, author of The Pull of the Stars

"Sarah Moss seems to have achieved the impossible: she has written a gripping, thoughtful, and revelatory book about lockdown."
--Paula Hawkins, author of A Slow Fire Burning

"There is wit, there is compassion, there is a tension that builds like a pressure cooker. This slim, intense masterpiece is one of my best books of the year."
--Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle

"A masterfully tense, deeply empathetic novel about lives stilled and reexamined, and the uncertainty and danger of the world that surrounds them. I was completely riveted by the central questions of its narrative, and by its tender, insightful exploration of the times we are living through."
--Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

About the Author

Sarah Moss is the author of Summerwater, a best book of the year in The Guardian and The Times (London), and Ghost Wall, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a best book of the year in Elle, the Financial Times, and other publications. Her previous books include the novels Cold Earth, Night Waking, Bodies of Light, and Signs for Lost Children, and the memoir Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland. She was educated at the University of Oxford and now teaches at University College Dublin.