The Fell

In her novel The Fell (2021), Irish writer Sarah Moss explores the psychological and social dissonance of the COVID-19 pandemic within the rural Peak District of Northern Britain. The novel follows Kate, an out-of-work waitress, who, suffocated by the isolation of lockdown, takes an illicit walk into the wild hills known as the fell, the barren moor. As she reflects on the imposed restrictions, she questions, “When did we become a species whose default state is shut up indoors? […] We’re a living experiment, she thinks, in the intensive farming of humans, [though] it’s all in the name of safety, not profit.” Her journey, intended as a brief escape, triggers events that echo the disarray of the pandemic.

As a pandemic fiction, with COVID-19 as a central part of the story, Moss’s narrative structure blends multiple perspectives, real-time pacing, and fragmented interiority to explore the psychological and emotional effects of the pandemic. By focusing on one November night, Moss explores diverse experiences of lockdown through the eyes of four characters—Kate, her son Matt, her elderly neighbor Alice, and Rob, the rescuer. This shifting viewpoint is complemented by the novel’s real-time narrative structure, where Kate’s slow, tension-filled walk into the hills mirrors the larger emotional weight of the pandemic. The interiority of each character is fragmented, with their reflections and anxieties about isolation, survival, and dependence emerging in disjointed bursts. This sense of time distortion, where the present moment blurs with past experiences, intensifies the novel’s exploration of how confinement affects not only physical freedom but also emotional and psychological states. Finally, Moss’s treatment of the natural world as an active presence—both a source of escape and a challenge—further deepens the novel’s thematic engagement with the unpredictability of life under lockdown.