The British author on isolation, community and writing a novel set during the coronavirus pandemic
Last December, in the depths of lockdown, Sarah Moss picked up a copy of Winter Papers, an annual anthology of new Irish writing. The 46-year-old and her family had recently moved from Coventry to Dublin, and although Irish lockdown was less restrictive than the Britain version, Moss was feeling, she says, “completely frozen”. For nine months, the pandemic had been impossible to absorb, not only personally, but as a writer – until it showed up in Winter Papers. “It was only a glimpse of it in essays and stories,” Moss says, but for the first time she thought: “This is a thing we can write about. And it was such a relief.”
The permission given in that moment triggered an extraordinary burst of activity. Moss’s eighth novel, The Fell, was written in a frenzied few months and centres on the story of two neighbours in a remote village in the Peak District. At the beginning of the novel, Kate, a single mother of a teenage son, and her elderly neighbour, Alice, are both struggling with lockdown, not just the logistics but the guilt of complaining when they are supposed to be grateful simply for being alive. It’s perfect material for Moss, who in previous novels has examined the interplay between human systems and the natural world – specifically, how seemingly small domestic manoeuvres can throw one up against the vast planes of history, in ways tragic and absurd. In The Fell, Alice wonders if “maybe she’ll die without ever touching another human”, but also whether it’s OK to put frivolous items such as Hula Hoops on the list when Kate offers to do her shopping for her. Kate, meanwhile, asks, “When did we become a species whose default state is shut up indoors?” and, in an action that triggers the drama of the novel, sneaks out of the house for a rule-breaking walk. 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.
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