Book Review: “The Fell” by Sarah Moss
Surviving the Pandemic
It’s a shame that a book such as The Fell has been published. Not because it’s a terrible book — far from it — but because it’s a novel that hits rather close to home. Although by the time of this writing many COVID-19 restrictions have lifted where I live (in Ottawa, Canada), it has been nearly three years now since the pandemic originally began globally with zero chance of returning to complete normality in sight. So, The Fell — which was originally published in 2021 in Great Britain and is now making its North American trade paperback debut — is a book that’s an unsettling read: a reminder of what it was like a couple of years ago with lockdowns and various other restrictions, and a reminder of what life still is somewhat like. It is, perhaps, the ultimate pandemic novel because it treats COVID as so matter of fact, the virus isn’t even mentioned by name in this slim, less than 200-page work of art. It’s simply there, lurking in the background, waiting to pounce and claim its next victim.
On the surface, The Fell is not a book that seems to be about COVID, though it is set in pandemic times. Rather, placed in the moors of England, it tells the story of a middle-aged woman named Kate, who is a single mother and who has been quarantined in her home because she has come into close contact with someone with the virus. It is, thus, illegal for her to leave the house based on British law at the time. But she leaves her living quarters anyway to take a walk on the moor — presumably to get out of the maddeningly boring life of being sequestered away in your own house. When out on her rounds, she slips and falls. After she fails to come home and is noticed as missing by her son, presumably on the cusp of his teenage years, search and rescue are called in. So, aha! you might say. This is a thriller, a tale of survival against the elements. Not so fast. This is literary fiction told in a stream-of-consciousness style akin to James Joyce’s writings. Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different person, Kate included. This means that the novel is a series of long digressions that may or may not have anything to do with the plot of the book. Which, to be candid, may be something that turns some readers off.
However, those readers who do stick with The Fell — and how could you not at some 180-ish pages? — will be treated to an allegory about surviving COVID. This is, after all, the story of one woman trying to struggle against the elements all on her own. The Fell is a story about isolation, tedium, and waiting for rescue. I hope that’s not giving too much away, but there’s a lot of richness to be had in this short novel. That’s not to say that it doesn’t take time to get going. The first quarter might be confusing and slow-paced for some readers. What happens here is that the author introduces you to various characters, and some of them are only on the periphery of the action in the tale. There’s a lot of talk about cooking and baking, because, well, that’s what you do when you’re spirited away inside your abode: you eat just to have sustenance and find a way to keep replenishing energy for your body. Still, it takes a while for Kate’s story to kick into full gear, but, once it does, things start coming together and the various strands begin to make more sense. The secondary characters suddenly seem to not be so secondary: we meet the elderly Alice, Kate’s next-door neighbour, who reveals to the reader via her thoughts that she is another type of survivor: that of breast cancer and the pain of her husband’s recent-ish death. As you can see, everything in this novel is a mirror of COVID symbolically.
That all said, The Fell might be a bit of an acquired taste. It is a decidedly British book that uses slang terms that haven’t been substituted with more American ones (ie. the word “torch” replaced with the Americanized word “flashlight”) as sometimes is the case with books that cross the Atlantic. (I recall that Graham Joyce’s final book, The Year of the Ladybird, was given a new title in its American edition to remove the reference to the British way of saying “ladybug.”) Thus, it could be said that The Fell is not a novel with a great deal of commercial appeal in the world of pop culture. It is, however, a work of High Literature. This is something that will probably draw a more rarefied audience. And even though it is a short read, and perhaps might not be considered a major work, it does have its charm and it does make some serious points about the nature of human adaptability to whatever befalls us. The Fell is soul food for those who want a quick read of some great import. It’s a very good novel from someone with a high degree of intellect — and I can say that because author Sarah Moss can see patterns in human existence in the light of pandemic life. Perhaps, too, it draws some conclusions about the absurdity of government regulations meant to contain the spread of the virus that restricts personal freedom, making the cure somewhat worse maybe than the plague. All in all, The Fell has important things to say. It’s a shame that they needed to be said in a novel and not fall into the realm of simple, good ol’ fashioned common sense. But the reminder is more than welcome. Despite its brevity, this is a vital text.
Sarah Moss’ The Fell will be published by Picador on February 28, 2023.
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