Scala Radio Book Club: The Fell by Sarah Moss
A story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive
Last updated 11th Jan 2022
In the Scala Radio Book Club this week (11th November), Mark chatted to English writer and academic Sarah Moss on her brand-new novel The Fell.
At dusk on a November evening in 2020, a woman slips out of her garden gate and turns up the hill. Kate is in the middle of a two week quarantine period, but she just 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.
But Kate's neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate's son, soon realizes she's missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk - a breath of open-air - falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain rescue operation...
Unbearably suspenseful, witty and wise, The Fell asks probing questions about the place the world has become since March 2020, and the place it was before. Sarah Moss's novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive, and it will move you to tears.
Mark wanted to know why Sarah chose to set her novel in the unsettling time of lockdown 2020.
‘The being allowed outside for only an hour a day in lockdown, I found difficult and very panic-inducing,’ said Sarah. ‘But by the time I was thinking of the book, I was beginning to think that we need stories. We need ways of navigating this. That it couldn't continue to be this unspeakable thing that we couldn't represent and have no way of talking about. I think anything that you can incorporate into arts and culture, you can begin to find ways of talking and thinking about it and that seems both necessary and comforting.’
‘That experience and reflection of it is really important because we have not been through anything like that before,’ said Mark. ‘Alice the older widow, she lives next door, when she tells her daughter on the phone what Kate her neighbour is doing, breaking lockdown rules marching up onto the fell. Immediately, the daughter wants the police called. Rural police forces got lots of similar calls across lockdown. How surprised were you Sarah how quickly the population seemed to turn on itself?’
‘I was surprised and horrified. My parents live in the Peak District and there was a lot of it going on in their village. I was living in Coventry at a time where there's a lot of very overcrowded housing. People I knew in the Peak District, were looking at those silly photos of people in urban parks and saying, “Oh, they're all too close to each other and it's all their fault.” They had no idea what it's like to have seven people in a two-room flat with no outdoor space. I thought there was a real lack of understanding from people who had the luxury of their own space about what it was like if you were living in a densely inhabited crowded environment. I thought there was a lack of compassion and charity.’
Mark wanted to know if Sarah’s passion for running, helped formulate ideas for her books.
‘Yes, absolutely it does. I don’t consciously think about my books, but I find that the rhythms of walking and running and cycling and knitting, are very calming which helps clear the space for creative work somehow.’
Mark ended the interview by asking Sarah how she finds herself judging other people’s work. ‘I'm intrigued by the part of being a successful writer that involves commenting and judging on other people's writing, and you are going to be a judge for the Sunday Times Charlotte Aiken, Young Writer of the Year Award. How challenging do you find it judging the writing of other people?’
‘Well, to an extent it's what I've always done. My academic training is in literary criticism. I've been teaching creative writing in universities for 20 years and I review for the press. So, it's not about whether I like it and it’s my personal preference. It's about being able to recognise, experimental achievement and someone who really knows what they're doing with a sentence. Somebody who's taken on something difficult and can make it work.’