![]() ![]() It’s perfect material for Moss, who in previous novels has examined the interplay between human systems and the natural world – specifically, how seemingly small domestic manoeuvres can throw one up against the vast planes of history, in ways tragic and absurd. At the beginning of the novel, Kate, a single mother of a teenage son, and her elderly neighbour, Alice, are both struggling with lockdown, not just the logistics but the guilt of complaining when they are supposed to be grateful simply for being alive. Moss’s eighth novel, The Fell, was written in a frenzied few months and centres on the story of two neighbours in a remote village in the Peak District. The permission given in that moment triggered an extraordinary burst of activity. “It was only a glimpse of it in essays and stories,” Moss says, but for the first time she thought: “This is a thing we can write about. For nine months, the pandemic had been impossible to absorb, not only personally, but as a writer – until it showed up in Winter Papers. ![]() ![]() The 46-year-old and her family had recently moved from Coventry to Dublin, and although Irish lockdown was less restrictive than the Britain version, Moss was feeling, she says, “completely frozen”. L ast December, in the depths of lockdown, Sarah Moss picked up a copy of Winter Papers, an annual anthology of new Irish writing. ![]()
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