The outlines of Sarah Moss’ new novel, THE FELL, are pretty basic. It’s a winter evening in the north of England during the second COVID-19 lockdown. Kate, a divorced mom, and her teenage son, Matt, are in quarantine under a stay-at-home order following a potential COVID exposure. Kate, in a direct violation of rules and regulations, heads out on a late afternoon walk up the mountain near their home. Dusk falls. She falls. A rescue operation ensues.

So yes, the plot is pretty minimal --- unsurprising, I guess, for a slim novel. But its sparseness and brevity is also what makes it so remarkable. Moss manages to pack more ideas, more rich moments of consideration and quiet reflection --- not to mention more placidly simmering rage --- into a book this size than many novelists might squeeze into a 500-page epic.

"Moss manages to pack more ideas, more rich moments of consideration and quiet reflection --- not to mention more placidly simmering rage --- into a book this size than many novelists might squeeze into a 500-page epic."

THE FELL unfolds not only through Kate’s and Matt’s perspectives, but also from the point of view of their neighbor, a widow named Alice. We also hear from Rob, a divorced dad and one of the volunteer mountain rescue team members enlisted to help search for Kate.

The reader perhaps spends the most time with Kate, accompanying her through her mounting frustration at what she views as the bureaucracy’s increasingly draconian and contradictory policies. After she falls, she begins having surreal imaginary conversations with a raven, expressing her fears about her own inadequacies and the looming end of the world.

Back at home, Matt is coping with his mom’s absence in a completely authentic and sympathetically adolescent way. He worries about her but also does his best to be independent and mature. He makes himself an omelet, cleans surfaces in the kitchen, considers calling up his friend for a delivery of weed, and tries hard not to fall apart with anxiety and anger at his mom, who really should have known better than to head up the mountain without even taking her phone.

Alice comes off initially as judgmental, observing Kate’s departure for her hike and strongly considering turning her in to the authorities for breaking her quarantine. But, as Alice suffers through a painful Skype session with her grown daughter’s family, tries to figure out if and how to provide support for Matt (without exposing herself, as a cancer survivor, to potential COVID risk), and finds comfort in watching roller-skating tutorials on YouTube, her officiousness appears to hide genuine vulnerabilities about loneliness, irrelevance and fear of dying.

At one point, Kate bristles at the UK government’s use of patriotic propaganda to gin up support for a new round of lockdowns. She is tired of everyone hearkening back to the spirit of unity from World War II, when this time around everything seems both less urgent and more hopeless. THE FELL is not exactly hopeful, but it is suffused with small details, tiny kindnesses and remembrances. These things might not mean much on a global scale, but in the end they might make the difference between resigning oneself to death and longing to seize life, no matter how absurd or futile it seems.