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Spectator
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The past is another country: Ripeness, by Sarah Moss, reviewed
Sarah Moss is a prolific and vital novelist whose books encompass an array of subjects from Victorian social reform and 19th-century Japan to broken Brexit Britain and eating disorders. She combines teaching at University College, Dublin with writing in real time: The Fell, set during the second lockdown, came out in the summer of 2021, while My Good Bright Wolf, an experimental memoir about her anorexic breakdown in late 2020, was published last year. A forthcoming Channel 4 adaptation of Summerwater, which explored national identity and isolation against the backdrop of a soggy Scottish holiday park, may catapult her into the sort of gold-foil territory enjoyed by Maggie O'Farrell or Ali Smith. If not, then perhaps Ripeness, her ninth novel, will. Set partly in contemporary Ireland and partly in 1960s Italy, this is a tender book that explores issues such as identity, belonging and consent, themes that fit into Moss's wider oeuvre. 'Ripeness, not readiness, is all. Life has no form, you don't get to choose.' So mulls the protagonist Edith, riffing on Shakespeare's familiar lines, pitting a youthful Hamlet's readiness for death – 'voluntary, an act of will' – against an ancient Lear's ripeness – something that 'happens to us as to plums and pears, regardless of agency or volition'. The age dichotomy is deliberate. The novel features two different Ediths at two different life stages. The first is 73, living alone and happily divorced in present-day Ireland. The second is 17, taking a gap year before studying at Oxford. It is the mid-1960s and hemlines are rising everywhere, but 'had not reached the thigh of Italy'. Edith has been dispatched there by her mother, where her sister Lydia, a ballet dancer, is waiting out the final weeks of an unwanted pregnancy in her ballet master's sumptuous villa. Moss alternates chapters and perspectives, switching between third person for the older Edith and first person for her teenaged version, who is recounting her Italian adventure to an unnamed 'you'. This, it emerges, is her sister's child, who is handed over for adoption at birth. Edith writes without expectation that her words will ever be read but can't think what else to do. Despite the dark underside to what happened to Lydia, which has a parallel in the older Edith's story, this feels like a novel Moss had fun writing, not least because she gets to indulge the childhood love for ballet she detailed in My Good Bright Wolf. Her imagery is vivid. A jar of plum jam is 'still slightly warm, as if asleep'; Irish dry stone walls have 'a kind of stone lace… a tracery'. In Moss's hands, ripeness is more than just old age: it represents every woman's fertile body, to which too many men have helped themselves over the ages. This is an important and convincing book.
Scotsman
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Ripeness, by Sarah Moss review: 'feels somehow fabricated'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... This is a terribly accomplished novel, and I am unsure if that is a compliment or a criticism. It has an affecting core scenario, some extremely engaging writing, some very interesting observations; and yet I found it, at some gut level, manufactured, or as if it had palpable designs on eliciting a particular response. Moss has written eight other novels, and is much admired by novelists whose opinion I respect, and yet this felt somehow fabricated. It has the kind of realism that makes you mistake a Blaschka glass flower for the real thing. Ripeness has one central character but two distinct modes. In the present day and the third person, Edith is living in rural Ireland, divorced but in a happy and uncomplicated relationship with a German Marxist potter. A friend of Edith's is contacted by a possible step-sibling, and this triggers first-person recollections of her unusual gap year in the 1960s, away from her father's Derbyshire farm, when before going to Oxford she was in Italy, attending the final weeks of her glamorous, ballet dancer sister Lydia's unwanted pregnancy. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sarah Moss The reader is, of course, supposed to see the visible seams stitching the stories together. There is an element of intrigue in that the first person reminiscence is addressed to an initially nebulous 'you': 'I should be clear that I'm not the one you want either. You shouldn't get your hopes up. We'll come to that'. The reader is, in effect, reading a private correspondence (and the identity of the addressee is not exactly difficult to discern). The rise of personal computers even means that the 'letter' is not at the credulity-stretching length of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. Likewise, the third person sections slip effortlessly into close focus, internal monologue; as if the whole novel is an intrusion of sorts. Moss's previous works have a feature (not quite a formula) of setting political events against the personal. The Fell had the lockdown, Summerwater had Brexit amongst other apocalypses, Ghost Wall had Iron Age re-enactment alongside un-pretend toxic masculinity and The Tidal Zone featured an NHS in crisis paralleled to the post-war rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. This time, the ideas of home, belonging and inheritance are sufficiently baggy to have debates about 'good' (Ukrainian, white) refugees versus African ones alongside the intimate details of adoption, empty nests and disconnection. I am always uncertain if such neat matrices of meaning arise naturally from a narrative, or are trimmed and stapled to fit. Indeed, I am increasingly sceptical about the 'aboutness' of novels. The ballet, and to a lesser extent the pottery, offer a lexicon of terms and a stock of images that can be co-opted for symbolism. The idea, for example, of the 'kinesphere' – 'the space claimed by bodily movement' – is a readymade image to be translated onto various poses, postures, intimacies, indignities and distances. The title is again semantically fully loaded. It is literal in the figs, 'which I only knew dried and chopped in suet puddings' (a choice little piece of characterisation), to the metaphor for pregnancy as well as the cusp-y nature of the younger self, through to a sense of late life fulfilment. It appears within the text in a strange (and extremely clever) aside. Moss/Edith has noted the curious parallel of Hamlet's 'the readiness is all' and Edgar in King Lear's 'Ripeness is all' – prefaced by 'men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither', appropriately enough. Much could be said about this, but isn't. Edith says she 'managed to get into my Oxford entrance exam, my idea that Lear is a darker play than Hamlet'. Ye-e-e-e-es: but it's hardly an original idea that Lear is darker than Hamlet. Samuels Johnson and Taylor Coleridge would agree. Are we supposed to read this ironically, as evidence of Edith's naivety and unearned superiority? But it is, with the limits of the novel, written by the elderly Edith: is she concurring? Unaware? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad There are many memorable, shrewd notes: a marble bathroom is 'a room carved out of Stilton cheese', Edith chafes at A-level Italian including terms for 'nuclear deterrent' but not nappy, a child's 'sea-anemone mouth'. Young Edith brims with Eliot, Brontë, Milton and Hopkins in a convincing way, although the Older Edith talking about her friends 'Dearbhla from the Samaritans, and… Clare from a short-lived Dante reading group, Clare who was from the North via Modern Language at Cambridge' seems almost parodic. More seriously, there is a backstory about Edith's errant mother, who avoided the Holocaust and ends up on a kibbutz, which may have broad links to bohemianism, identity, duty versus free-spiritedness, but smacks of being the kind of thing that tends to occur in novels. Towards the end, Edith muses that 'Wouldn't it have saved the Third Reich some work, to be able to pull us all from a spreadsheet?' It's a throwaway line except IBM/Dehomag did precisely that. The patina of ballet references have a similar feel, and many of the ways in which they are deployed – weightlessness, elegance, pain – are handled more full-heartedly in a novel like Amélie Nothomb's The Book of Proper Names. Although there is much to appreciate here, it would be remiss not to warn the reader that it ends rather bathetically.
Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The glorious tension of Sarah Moss's novels
Sarah Moss is a master of the ticking clock. Her novels thrum with tension, building towards a dramatic climax. In Ghost Wall (2018) a teenage girl is dragged along by her father to a historical re-enactment camp to live like Iron Age Britons. But that doesn't include the sacrificial rituals, right? Then came Summerwater in 2020, set in a perpetually rainy Scottish cabin park where families and lovers attempt to make it through their respective holidays. The ending, when it comes, is explosive. The Fell (2021) had a woman escape the Covid lockdown for a hike gone terribly wrong. The premise of Moss's latest novel, Ripeness, is equally promising. In the 1960s 18-year-old Edith is sent away from the family home in England to
The Independent
17-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Scottish Secretary ‘very comfortable' with sending troops to Ukraine
Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has said he is 'very comfortable' with the Prime Minister's announcement that he would be willing to deploy British peacekeeping troops to Ukraine. The announcement came on Monday ahead of emergency defence talks with other European nations in Paris, with Sir Keir Starmer saying he will urge his counterparts to 'step up' on defence capability. Any British boots on the ground would come after a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia is agreed and would operate to ensure the agreement was not breached. Speaking to the PA news agency, Mr Murray said: 'I'm very comfortable with that, because the security and peace of Ukraine is security and peace for the rest of Europe and indeed the wider western world. 'It's really, really important for the UK and Europe to play its role in that. 'This would be a peacekeeping force in Ukraine in order to make sure that, if there is a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, that can be adhered to and we can make sure we can look forward to; A, it never happening again and B, security for the whole of Europe.' John Swinney was asked about the latest developments on Ukraine as he visited the set of Summerwater, an upcoming Channel 4 drama, near Balfron, Stirlingshire, on Monday. He told the PA news agency the situation is potentially 'perilous', saying: 'Up until last week I though we had very wide international agreement about the necessity of repelling the Russian aggression that has taken place … 'The events of the last week have left many people with significant doubts that that remains an agreed position across a range of different countries.' He welcomed the talks in France and said the there must be 'a united front that supports the independence of Ukraine and does all that is necessary to repel Russian aggression.' On defence spending, he said the UK would be better to invest in conventional forces rather than nuclear weapons, but said there is 'always a discussion' to be had about spending levels. Writing in The Daily Telegraph on Monday, the Prime Minister said he did not take such a decision 'lightly', adding: 'I feel very deeply the responsibility that comes with potentially putting British servicemen and women in harm's way. 'But any role in helping to guarantee Ukraine's security is helping to guarantee the security of our continent, and the security of this country. 'The end of this war, when it comes, cannot become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again.' Talks are due to take place this week in Saudi Arabia between the US – led by secretary of state Marco Rubio – and Russia, but will not include Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday any outcome would not be adhered to by the Ukrainians. Mr Murray said there 'can't be any peace in Ukraine' without the leaders of the country being involved in talks, as he echoed the Prime Minister's view that the UK could be a bridge between the Trump administration and Kyiv.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
John Swinney to visit set of Channel 4 drama filmed in Scotland
The First Minister will visit the set of a new Channel 4 drama, with £2 million pledged for the screen sector in an upcoming budget. John Swinney and Culture Secretary Angus Robertson are due to visit the set of Summerwater, which is being filmed in Scotland and benefited from Scottish Government funding. Summerwater, based on the novel by Sarah Moss, was described as an 'existential thriller' set in a 'rain-drenched holiday park in Scotland' by screenwriter John Donnelly. The novel, which has been adapted for a six-part series, was described as 'witty, dark exploration of modern British life' by Ollie Madden, director of Film4 and head of Channel 4 drama. The series received £700,000 through the Broadcast Content Fund from Screen Scotland – which is supported by Scottish Government funding. READ MORE: Everything to know on Unforgotten series 6 starring Sanjeev Bhaskar Removing Scottish classic from schools is an act of cultural vandalism Alan Cumming's spectacular Brigadoon train journey is just the ticket The First Minister and Mr Robertson will embark on a tour of the set, talk to crew members and meet with trainees on the production. Speaking before the visit, Mr Swinney said: 'Scotland boasts an incredibly innovative and creative film and television sector that continues to go from strength to strength. 'The creative industries are a vital asset to Scotland's economy and we want to continue to support the sector to unlock its full potential. 'In our upcoming budget, our dedicated public body Screen Scotland will receive an additional £2 million to attract further investment in the screen sector. 'This is only part of a wider additional £34 million uplift that will enable our culture sector to flourish, through a budget that brings us halfway to reaching our commitment of investing at least £100 million more annually in the sector by 2028/29″.
