Tag: books

The Fell is a novel about lockdown, kindness, and survival, as a single mum goes for a walk and doesn’t come back. It’s November 2020 and Kate and her son Matt are self-isolating, but Kate is going stir crazy, unable to handle staying inside, so surreptitiously sets off into their Peak District surroundings. Her clinically vulnerable neighbour Alice spots her go, and soon Alice and Matt are wondering where Kate is, and a rescue operation is underway.

I’ve read Sarah Moss’ previous novels Summerwater and Ghost Wall, and in some ways this one is similar to Summerwater in that it is looking at a particular present moment in Britain, exploring it through multiple perspectives and the natural landscape. However, what is perhaps most notable about The Fell is that it is a COVID novel, or whatever you want to call it, and is very specifically set in November 2020. I don’t know if I’ve read a book that’s set so recently but so specifically at the same time, with a sense that at least initial readers will remember that time and what you could and couldn’t do. That is a lot of the focus of the book, around four different characters’ perspectives on lockdown and what their lives are like: Kate who can’t handle being stuck inside, Alice who is vulnerable but is privileged in other ways and yet lonely, Matt who is having to deal with being stuck inside with his mum, and Rob, a mountain rescue volunteer whose daughter is staying with him that weekend. The plot is quite straightforward, as it mostly focuses on the characters’ interior lives, and what will happen to Kate.

This is the first COVID novel I’ve read, so it possible benefited from that, and I felt that Moss does a very good job of exploring the characters’ attempts to keep going through the lockdown and what happens when that all comes together in this one night. The atmosphere will probably make it hard to read for some people, really bringing back memories of being stuck inside and a lot of blame floating around, but it works well in this case, with Moss’ style of getting inside characters’ thoughts effective at increasing tension whilst building up a picture of their mental states during lockdown. I’m not sure if it’s all that enjoyable to read a book so carefully set during a specific part of the pandemic in England, but it is pulled off well.

I found The Fell an intriguing read, partly because I’ve not seen many fictional representations of daily life in the pandemic yet so it felt fairly fresh, or at least rehashing things I remembered. The simmering tension and writing style were similar to Moss’ other novels, so fans of her work will probably like this one, though it’s worth going into it expecting it to be about lockdown and COVID so you don’t go into it expecting escapism from the present.

Seesaw is a novel about a Nigerian writer whose failing novel is discovered by a white American woman who suggests he apply to the William Blake Program for Emerging Writers in Boston. Frank leaves Port Jumbo for America, where it becomes apparent he is expected to be an ‘African’ writer and talk about post-colonialism, and Frank doesn’t want to be the stereotype, but being expelled turns out to be quite helpful for a writing career.

The book is both a satire of literary culture and what is expected of authors, and the story of a somewhat lost man finding direction. It is told with hindsight, and the pacing wasn’t quite what I expected, but I liked the parts that paralleled Frank’s experiences with what he later uses in his reinvigorated career commenting on America. There was also some good light-hearted mockery of academic and literary language and how it can both mean nothing and specific things. Because Frank was the narrator, a lot of the book was more focused on what he did and saw than these elements, and for me I would’ve preferred more of them.

A comic novel about a writer going in a strange journey to and around America, Seesaw is a light read that still delves into cultural difference and what diversity in literature really means, albeit in a satirical way.

Blue-Skinned Gods is a novel about belief and growing up, as a boy treated as a god looks to the reality of the world. Living in an ashram in India, Kalki was born blue, and his father controls his life, leading towards the trials that will prove him an avatar of Vishnu. However, as he grows up, Kalki begins to realise that his father is keeping secrets from him, and when he finally discovers the truth about his life, it is time to discover who he really is.

The narrative is told through Kalki looking back, with most of the story focused on him growing up, and it gives a very vivid picture of someone treated as a childgod and having to deal with the fact that might all be a lie. The later part of the book, set in America, has a faster pace, with the ending more of a fresh start than an ending, and Kalki as the narrator does give some earlier hints about what he does later on. In this way, it is very much a coming of age type story, though quite different to many of them because it is focused around ideas of belief as well as self, and how to handle realising you cannot actually heal people despite being told you can.

There’s a lot about sexuality and gender woven into the story, mostly as subplots and explorations of fluidity and self, and it’s especially interesting to see how Kalki relates gender and sexuality to Hindu stories, using stories as a source of acceptance both of himself and others. In general, the depiction of someone’s beliefs being challenged in various ways, and how people adapt to that, is a key part of the book, especially relating it to storytelling. Whether it’s the lies used to present someone as a god or the stories we tell to make sense of things, stories and fiction run throughout the narrative.

I found this an engrossing book that perhaps could’ve gone on a little longer so the later part didn’t feel to get a lot less time than the earlier part, though the whirlwind sense of the ending does fit with Kalki’s experiences.