18-05-2025
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
