The Fell is a thought-provoking and evocative read, exploring as it does themes around isolation, anxiety and compliance during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The book is set during a single 24-hour period in November 2020, in Derbyshire's Peak District. Britain is experiencing a surge in cases of the SARS-CoV-2 / Covid-19 virus (although the virus itself is never named in the book) and in the midst of social restrictions. Through four separate narrative voices, we follow the protagonists as they experience the frustrations, self-reflections and temptations that will be familiar to anyone who has been locked down for any period over the past two years (and that's most of us!). By its nature, it's an introspective piece, which rolls fairly languidly to its defining moment, then becomes more plot-based for the second half, rolling towards a reflective conclusion.
Struggling middle-aged cafe worker Kate has been furloughed from work and is presently sitting out a two week period of home isolation, after a close contact has tested positive. She's a personality who thrives in nature and is experiencing increasing levels of psychological distress at her confinement as the days roll on. Her 16-year-old son, Matt, is also cooped up in their small moorside cottage, amusing himself with online gaming and eating copious amounts of food. Neighbour Alice is also enduring isolation, self-imposed in her case, as she has recently undergone treatment for cancer and is thus at higher risk of poor outcomes, should she catch the virus.
In a moment of weakness one evening, Kate makes the decision to leave her home and take a brief walk up the nearby fell, hoping that it will restore her to a more balanced frame of mind. She rationalises her breach of isolation on the basis that there are few, if any, other people to meet or be seen by and that she'll most likely be back in the house before Matt has realised she's gone. Alice sees Kate walking towards the Fell, considers cautioning her against it, but ultimately decides to turn a blind eye.
Unfortunately, Kate's “harmless” stroll on the fell takes an unexpected turn when she ventures further than intended, falls and injures herself as night and bad weather descend. Without her mobile phone, Kate is in real danger, particularly as she has told nobody where she was going. At home, Matt becomes increasingly more concerned about his mother's whereabouts, conferring at a distance with Alice and wrestling with the competing pressures of ensuring his mother's safety, while not exposing her to the risk of a large fine she can ill afford to pay.
The fourth narrator joins the story at around the mid-point. Rob is a mountain rescue volunteer and must sacrifice a rare evening with his teenaged daughter when he receives the call-out to search for Kate in the National Park. Nevertheless, Rob knows where his priorities must lie, especially now with the ranks of on-call rescuers depleted by lock-downs and illness.
I found The Fell a nuanced and thoughtful read, capturing many of the human emotions and preoccupations that the experience of living through a pandemic has raised. I certainly never had the impression, as some other reviewers have voiced, that the book is advocating an “anti-vax” or non-compliant position. Instead, I feel that Sarah Moss is espousing values of understanding, kindness and pulling together in adversity. Some personalities will inevitably find periods of isolation and containment more psychologically challenging than others, and many readers will have experienced the temptation to “bend the rules” a little as a managed risk over the course of the pandemic. Most of those occasions have presumably been relatively harmless, but it's in the nature of human experience for things to sometimes go awry – how would we ourselves deal with such a situation?
The Fell is a timely reflection on the human condition when subjected to unfamiliar stressors. I'd recommend it to any reader who enjoys quality literary and/or contemporary fiction, and those with a particular interest in the way individuals have experienced and responded to the worldwide pandemic.
