Tag Archives: Sarah Moss

#BookReview ’Summerwater’ by Sarah Moss #contemporary

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Twenty-four hours in the Scottish countryside, twelve people are staying in holiday cabins beside an isolated loch. Summerwater by Sarah Moss starts off with strangers concerned with the minutiae of their own lives and ends with a tragedy. Sarah MossThis is beautifully written with sly humour coupled with sensory description of the place which puts you right there. The pace is slow and contemplative, taking time to plait together the observations by characters and the actual names, so carefully building together a picture of a temporary community. At first, they make assumptions and generalisations about each other. A retired couple sit and look out at the rain, reminiscing about the previous years they spent in this cabin. A young mother runs in all weathers and at all times of day, leaving her husband to look after the children. A teenager escapes the boredom of his bedroom by kayaking around the loch. The Romanian family, who party all night and don’t know how to behave, are the only ones seeming to have fun on holiday. They are also the only ones whose viewpoint we don’t hear, setting them apart from the rest. While at night a shadow stands in the woods, watching.
I never did get the identity of some characters straight in my head and the building of tension – the shadow in the woods – didn’t convince me. I didn’t feel it was necessary as I quickly became fascinated by the setting and the gradual interaction of characters. The constant rain acts as a claustrophobia device keeping everyone inside, feeling trapped, looking out and watching others, making judgements.
Summerwater is also darkly funny. Don’t miss the chuckle-out-loud scene when Milly and Josh are having sex but she’s thinking about a cup of tea and a bacon butty. The chapters about people are alternated with short sections about the natural world – a deer and fawn, the geology of the rocks, the origin of water flowing into the loch, bats, birds waiting for the rain to stop. These briefly pause the story – most are two paragraphs long – but add to the sense of place.
Most definitely not a page-turner in the thriller sense, Summerwater ends abruptly. It is however thick with atmosphere. The rain, the wet vegetation, the finger-chilling cold, the sense of the holiday park, the loch and earth being much older than the visitors. It is a book about a day in which not a lot happens, showing how small things become big when you are bored, and how we are all inter-connected.

And here’s my review of another novel by Sarah Moss:-
GHOST WALL

If you like this, try:-
‘Akin’ by Emma Donoghue
‘These Dividing Walls’ by Fran Cooper
‘Anderby Wold’ by Winifred Holtby

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SUMMERWATER by Sarah Moss https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4SD via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ’Ghost Wall’ by Sarah Moss #contemporary #mystery

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Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss is a beautifully written short novel, more a novella at 160 pages. Set in the Nineties it is the story of a re-enactment conducted by a family and a university professor and his students who live in the woods in Northumberland to recreate the lifestyle of Iron Age man. Class issues run throughout; accent, education, north/south, but it is also a time of changes embodied in the character and changing sensibilities of seventeen year old Silvie. Sarah MossTold completely through the viewpoint of Silvie it juxtaposes the harsh Iron Age life with her own upbringing by authoritarian self-taught father Bill and bland mother Alison who has surrendered to her husband’s will, with the life of the Iron Age bog people. In almost a closed room setting more familiar from crime fiction, the group is thrown into close proximity living in difficult conditions with minimal food. As the story progresses the group becomes divided. The two adult men disappear to work on their ‘projects’ while Silvie’s mum stays in camp to cook and sit around. This leaves the students to their own devices to forage, harvest mussels and skinny dip. It is a haunting story as Silvie tries to mollify her father, who demands exacting behaviour and manners, while student Molly struggles to understand Silvie’s subservience. Tensions grow as Molly encourages Silvie to defy her father. Bill is a traditionalist, he admires Britain’s distant past as a preferred alternative to the modern world.
Ghost Wall is a creeping tale as your nerves tauten waiting for Silvie to be in trouble again, at times I wished for more about her parallel Bog girl. There are clever moments of relief such as the girls’ visit to the local Spar shop for cake and ice cream to relieve the tedium of gruel and rabbit. I was left with the feeling that Moss tried to shoehorn too many issues into a small space – class, male chauvinism, racism, idealism, sexuality, even Brexit, so I was left feeling she had a list of things to mention.
This is an unusual novel, beautifully written. A chilling read. Tense, but not a thriller. The climax when it happens is over quickly and I was left wanting more; the last page came as a surprise and I felt rather disappointed.
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And here’s my review of another novel by Sarah Moss:-
SUMMERWATER

If you like this, try:-
‘Elmet’ by Fiona Mozley
‘The Good People’ by Hannah Kent
‘The Western Wind’ by Samantha Harvey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview GHOST WALL by Sarah Moss https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3As via @SandraDanby