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The Fell

from the bestselling author of Summerwater

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The Fell

By: Sarah Moss
Narrated by: Emma Lowndes
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About this listen

Acclaimed author of Summerwater and Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss is back with a sharply observed and darkly funny novel for our times.

'A tense page turner . . . I gulped The Fell down in one sitting' - Emma Donoghue
'Gripping, thoughtful and revelatory' – Paula Hawkins
'This slim, intense masterpiece is one of my best books of the year' - Rachel Joyce
'Her work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be' The Times

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 any more – 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. This novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive, and it will move you to tears.

The Times audiobook of the week.

‘One of our very best contemporary novelists’ – Independent

 Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Small Town & Rural Suspense Thriller & Suspense

Critic Reviews

A slim, tense page turner that captures the weird melancholia of locked-down life but also the precious warmth of human connection. I gulped The Fell down in one sitting (Emma Donoghue)
Carefully, affectingly and with emotional veracity, Moss opens out Alice’s secrets along with everyone else’s: the mortal fears, the losses, the mistakes. Moss writes so compassionately about human frailty while her own work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be
With The Fell, Sarah Moss seems to have achieved the impossible: she has written a gripping, thoughtful and revelatory book about lockdown (Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train)
A funny, savage novel
Absorbing . . . ingeniously done . . there's an intoxicating flow to much of the writing . . . a humane, thoughtful reflection on the lockdown experience
The Fell reflects the lives we have been living for the last 18 months in a way no other writer has dared to do. 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)
A one-sitting read that's both thriller and stream of consciousness meditation on how Covid has changed our world . . . ambitious and immersive
Moss is strong on pastoral lyricism, and her characteristic humour is as piercing here as in her previous novels . . . The Fell eloquently explores many of the big issues we have been facing since March 2020
A masterfully tense, deeply empathetic novel about lives stilled and re-examined, 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)
Again and again, and always with steely precision, Moss has mined both the circumstances and the consequences of isolation . . . 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
She conjures the fretful confinement of the pandemic with colossal skill . . . deft and evocative . . . the operation to rescue Kate is nail-biting. There are also scenes of unbearable poignancy . . . shrewd and moving
The pandemic is spawning some fine writing, and this helter-skelter novel by Moss is one of the best yet. The book captures both the paranoia of the times and the kindness of strangers (Mail on Sunday)
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