The Fell
There’s a difference between isolation, “alone time,” and loneliness. Maybe they intersect a bit, but the distinct ways that we experience — and perhaps sometimes crave — solitude don’t really share qualities, beyond the obvious granular one, with each other.
I’ve enjoyed all the Sarah Moss books I’ve read, and The Fell — which takes place during a 2020 lockdown period and explores these different types of solitude — is no exception. Moss often writes with a spare stream of consciousness style, which in the case of The Fell, mirrors and highlights the isolating nature of our thoughts when we are alone and have no one to place boundaries or etiquette or formatting around a conversation: “Stop it, silly talk, no one knows what there’ll be again, that’s the truth, you’d just sometimes rather have dark conviction than the appalling uncertainty of hope, the risk of letting yourself believe there might be good times again, any kind of good time again, though on the other hand if you really believed this was it, all there’ll ever be — well, people are born, live and die in much worse circumstances, aren’t they, only not alone, that’s the thing, she’s not complaining about her material conditions.”
Like a lot of Moss’ work, The Fell creates this diorama-esque view of neighbors who may only interact with the slightest of overlap. Of course this is sort of the raison d’être in this one (“When did we become a species whose default state is shut up indoors?”), and a moment of rescue — another shared quality among her books — feels weightier than typical perhaps.
@thescienceofreading once used the phrase “books having a conversation with each other” which happened as I read The Fell and History of the Rain (Niall Williams) somewhat concurrently. Here’s an abridged excerpt toward the end of that one:
“Human beings were built for response. But human nature can’t tolerate too much waiting. Between the emotion and the response falls the shadow, T.S. Eliot said…All writers are waiting for replies. That’s what I’ve learned. Maybe all human beings are.”
I certainly like my “alone time,” but wow, I hope we continue to see how vital it is to live out and about in the world.
originally published on instagram