Morven Christie’s limpid, Scottish-inflected voice and gentle, enticing tone combine to lure listeners into Sarah Moss’s astonishing seventh novel as effectively as mermaids tempt sailors into the sea. Set in a Scottish holiday camp over the course of a long, rainy day, the novel comprises a series of linked vignettes. Mostly moored inside their cabins, the camp’s inhabitants watch their neighbors while navigating their travel companions and washed-out holidays. Each vignette is its own vivid, heartfelt, mysterious, or humorous story that builds with the others toward an unexpected and shocking final drama. Christie’s narration keeps listeners rapt while maintaining rhythm with the action, be it a runner’s stride, lovers’ desire, a child’s watchfulness. The result is a memorable marriage of remarkable fiction and outstanding performance. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Summerwater: A Novel
Narrated by Morven Christie
Sarah MossUnabridged — 4 hours, 27 minutes
Summerwater: A Novel
Narrated by Morven Christie
Sarah MossUnabridged — 4 hours, 27 minutes
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Overview
'[Morven] Christie's narration keeps listeners rapt while maintaining rhythm with the action, be it a runner's stride, lovers' desire, a child's watchfulness. The result is a memorable marriage of remarkable fiction and outstanding performance." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner
The acclaimed author of Ghost Wall offers a new, devastating, masterful novel of subtle menace
They rarely speak to each other, but they take notice-watching from the safety of their cabins, peering into the half-lit drizzle of a Scottish summer day, making judgments from what little they know of their temporary neighbors. On the longest day of the year, the hours pass nearly imperceptibly as twelve people go from being strangers to bystanders to allies, their attention forced into action as tragedy sneaks into their lives.
At daylight, a mother races up the mountain, fleeing into her precious dose of solitude. A retired man studies her return as he reminisces about the park's better days. A young woman wonders about his politics as she sees him head for a drive with his wife, and tries to find a moment away from her attentive boyfriend. A teenage boy escapes the scrutiny of his family, braving the dark waters of the loch in a kayak. This cascade of perspective shows each wrapped up in personal concerns, unknown to each other, as they begin to notice one particular family that doesn't seem to belong. Tensions rise, until nightfall brings an irrevocable turn.
From Sarah Moss, the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall-a “riveting” (Alison Hagy, The New York Times Book Review) “sharp tale of suspense” (Margaret Tablot, The New Yorker), Summerwater is a searing exploration of our capacity for kinship and cruelty, and a gorgeous evocation of the natural world that bears eternal witness.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
“Sharp, searching, thoroughly imagined, Summerwater is utterly of the moment, placing its anxious human dots against a vast, indifferent landscape; with its wit and verve and beautiful organization, it throws much contemporary writing into the shade!”-Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror & the Light
Editorial Reviews
[Moss] writes beautifully about English middle-class life, about souls in tumult, about people whose lives have not turned out the way they'd hoped. She catches the details of ordinary existence in a manner that's reminiscent of the director Mike Leigh…She never condescends, and her fluid prose is suggestive of larger and darker human themes…Summerwater is a bit less tightly wound than Ghost Wall…But there's little doubt, reading Moss, that you're in the hands of a sophisticated and gifted writer.
11/02/2020
Moss’s taut latest (after Ghost Wall) turns a rain-drenched park in the Scottish Highlands into a site of tension and unease for a group of vacationing strangers. The book opens with a middle-aged woman going for a run in the early morning, her family still asleep in their rented cabin. As she follows the trail past an illegally pitched tent, she considers the trope of a dangerous man in the woods. From here on out, each chapter introduces a new point of view among the mix of English tourists and Scots who watch and pass judgment upon one another without interacting, and situations such as a teenage boy’s ill-advised kayak trip across a rough loch and a teenage girl’s sneaking out at night keep the reader wondering if this is the kind of book where the worst thing will happen. As the noises of late-night revelry from one cabin draw attention from all others, many of whom describe its dwellers wrongly as “foreign” or “those Romanians,” the suspense builds. Meanwhile, a series of lyrical interludes describing the park’s elements of nature and eons of evolution provide delightfully ironic contrasts to the small human dramas. Readers unafraid of a bit of rain will relish this. (Jan.)
A Best Book of the Year at NPR, The Guardian, The Times (London), and The Irish Times
A Best Book of January: O Magazine
A Most Anticipated Book of 2021: Paperback Paris
Most Anticipated at The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, The Irish Times, Stylist, and iNews
“[Moss] writes beautifully about... souls in tumult, about people whose lives have not turned out the way they’d hoped. . .There’s little doubt, reading Moss, that you’re in the hands of a sophisticated and gifted writer."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"Cunning and contemplative."
—O Magazine
“Pulsing, glorious… What makes Moss's work so distinctive: the lovely countermelodies of earth, animal, and sky that contextualize human dramas.”
—Annalisa Quinn, NPR
“Sarah Moss has an uncanny ability to prickle the reader’s skin. . .The novel’s explosive conclusion feels like witnessing swamp gas bubbling to the surface and catching fire.”
—Lorraine Berry, The Boston Globe
"The chapters build a superb sense of foreboding... Ms. Moss is masterly with loomings and premonitions."
—Wall Street Journal
"The final paragraph of Summerwater is one of the most chilling in recent memory, pointing to the devastating consequences of bigotry and hatred, and to the undeniable mastery of Moss’s storytelling."
—The Chicago Review of Books
“Sharp, searching, thoroughly imagined, Summerwater is utterly of the moment, placing its anxious human dots against a vast, indifferent landscape; with its wit and verve and beautiful organization, it throws much contemporary writing into the shade!”
—Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror & the Light
“A rich parade of inner lives . . . [A] thoughtful investigation into community and difference.”
—The Guardian
“This broodingly suspenseful and engagingly intimate novel is a miniature portrait of family life in various forms, of old age and childhood, framed by wild nature, which becomes a character in itself . . . With consummate skill, the author reveals the inner lives of a handful of characters, their meditations by turns intensely moving and laconically humorous . . . while conjuring up both landscape and atmosphere with lyrical delicacy.”
—Kirkus, starred review
"Will leave you breathless."
—Good Housekeeping, The Best Books to Read in 2021 So Far
“The natural world is a dominant force in this absorbing novel . . . Moss’s insight into her characters’ inner lives is among the many strengths of Summerwater . . . For more than a decade, Sarah Moss has been crafting quiet, complex novels that make an indelible impression on the reader. This is one of her best, and most accessible, and should bring her work to a wider audience.”
—John Boyne, Irish Times
“Nothing escapes Sarah Moss’s sly humor and brilliant touch. Deft and brimming with life, Summerwater is a novel of endless depth. A masterpiece.”
—Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
“Building up a sense of dread in a novel is a subtle art, and Sarah Moss is an absolute master of it . . . It certainly feels like an accurate reflection of our confused, scared, angsty present. Perhaps Moss’s point, though, is that we’re all so busy worrying about the things we can’t influence we’ve lost sight of the things we can.”
—Roger Cox, The Scotsman
“When it comes to the workings of the secret heart, and the exchange between mind and body, this is a writer with few equals (I’m thinking of Anne Enright and Han Kang and not many others) . . . This a writer in whose gifts we trust, and she pulls off feat after feat of daring and empathy and wisdom.”
—Andrew Meehan, Herald Scotland
“There is a sense of unease from the beginning of the novel, that builds—almost imperceptibly—to a deafening thrum of dread, and by the time I reached the end of the novel I could hardly breathe. So, so good.”
—Alice O’Keeffe, The Bookseller
“From the author of Ghost Wall comes another taut psychological novel tinged with menace . . . Sarah Moss roves across a wide cast of characters, dipping into internal worlds marked by anxiety—from casual grumbling about the wrong type of people moving into the area to a newlywed husband’s obsession (unshared by his wife) with simultaneous orgasm. With uncanny insight and wit, Sarah Moss weaves this polyphony of voices into unfolding tragedy, and a meditation with broader social and political implications.”
—Cameron Woodhead, The Sydney Morning Herald
“Moss heaps up the pointers to something terrible with the cruel skill of a horror technician. By the midpoint, reading feels as stressful and claustrophobic as any wet-weather getaway, and just as impossible to get out of before the appalling end . . . The world is getting worse. Moss, though, only seems to be growing more brilliant.”
—Sarah Ditum, The Times (UK)
“Moss is a writer who can say more than most others in half the space. Her latest, a haunting story of alienation set on a Scottish campsite, is the summer’s most interesting read.”
—Independent (UK)
“Slim but electrifying... Moss takes us inside each of the characters’ minds brilliantly effectively.”
—The Times (UK)
“Masterful. . . Wickedly funny virtuosic writing [with] a dark core.. . [Moss] plants tiny details that raise the pulse. As a result, like the characters, we soon start to see danger everywhere... In Summerwater, Sarah Moss establishes herself as our preeminent chronicler of anxiety.”
—Tara K. Menon, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Though her characters are trapped in their heads as well as in their cabins, Moss has fun letting them loose on the page . . . The smell of blood is never far away in Moss’s work . . . You could call it her breakout novel, which is ironic, since its subject is lockdown . . . it’s attentive to the way we live now and to our divisions . . . there’s range and vitality to the voices.”
—Blake Morrison, London Review of Books
“Tragedy looms but Moss buoys the reader along with wit and compassion as she flits between viewpoints. Endlessly interesting.”
—Hephzibah Anderson, Daily Mail
“This story of a turbulent Scottish holiday is suffused with fascination . . . Briefly juxtaposed lives are caught in vignettes sharp with telling detail and acute observation. Comedy often ripples across the surface . . . The ending is sombre, but the scenes leading up to it in this latest display of Moss’s imaginative versatility shine with intelligence.”
—Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
“Summerwater benefits from the time that has passed since [Ghost Wall], encompassing a wider group of characters to tackle a wider set of issues . . . Few works of fiction published this year will capture the essence of Britain today as well as Moss does in Summerwater . . . Moss has an extraordinary gift for creating fully-formed, authentic people that could have stepped from real-life onto the page, and here she has us eavesdrop on their internal monologues.”
—Charlie Connelly, The New European
“A new Moss novel is always a gift.”
—Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail
“[Sarah] Moss is a writer who can say more than most others in half the space. Her latest, a haunting story of alienation set on a Scottish campsite, is the summer’s most interesting read.”
—Sarah Hughes, iNews
“Summerwater is a triumph and confirms Sarah Moss as one of the best writers in Britain today.”
—Fiona Mozley, author of Elmet
"Boy, does Sarah Moss know how to evoke an eerie sense of foreboding . . . Evocative and compelling reading, particularly if you're on a staycation this summer.”
—Cyan Turan, Cosmopolitan
“With delicate precision, Summerwater takes the moral and emotional temperature of a whole society. It is matchless, too, in its blending of steely insight with humor and compassion.”
—Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger
“[Sarah] Moss’s work has an uncanny prescience . . . There is something all too familiar in the uneasy frustrations of her multigenerational cast of 12, incarcerated in damp cabins, enduring lashing rain, bored and on a knife edge . . . Moss cleverly subverts expectations . . . Fluent and absorbing . . . assured yet brutal.”
—Catherine Taylor, Prospect
“Sarah Moss [is] one of the most interesting writers working today.”
—John Boyne, Daily Mail
“A slim, spare, suspenseful tale, mud-flecked with disquieting horror.”
—Patricia Nicol, The Daily Mail
“Summerwater is a beautiful book, written with delicacy and grace, yet with an undertow as dark as the Scottish loch by which its characters are holidaying in ignorance of the tragedy to come. If you are a huge fan of Sarah Moss’s work, as I am, you will find yourself parceling it out, to read a chapter a day, like a gift.”
—Louise Doughty, author of Platform Seven
“Gorgeously written [and] atmospheric, with a sense of unease that builds to the shocking ending.”
—Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping
“Sarah Moss is the most brilliant writer. She deserves to win all the prizes.”
—Joanna Trollope, author of City of Friends
“This novel—about crisis and isolation in its own ways—moved and encouraged me in difficult times. Another deft, sensitive, crystalline book by Sarah Moss; I loved it.”
—Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From
“Tense and atmospheric.”
—Francesca Brown, Stylist
“I read this brilliant novel in one greedy gulp. Sarah Moss is an acute observer of modern life and puts humanity on the page with deep understanding and wit.”
—Cathy Rentzenbrink, author The Last Act of Love
“A masterful and immersive exercise in tension; here are the many conflicting voices of modern Britain in microcosm. Sarah Moss reminds us that society is only ever two short steps away from collapse.”
—Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing
Praise for Sarah Moss
"Sarah Moss possesses the rare light touch when it comes to melding the uncanny with social commentary."
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
“Moss’s star is firmly in the ascendant.”
—Guardian
“Moss has quietly, and it must be said remarkably quickly, been putting out some of the most interesting and carefully sculpted novels of recent years.”
—Financial Times
“One of our very best contemporary novelists.”
—Independent (UK)
01/01/2021
At a rustic Scottish resort where an assortment of families are spending a summer vacation, the incessant rain has kept everyone mostly cooped up inside, and each chapter offers a stream-of-consciousness perspective on events from a different vacationer. We follow everyone from small children to frustrated teenagers to parents and partners as they cook, play, have sex, and venture outside for a jog or a paddle on a kayak. They observe and comment on their own family dynamics and notice others at the resort, sometimes critically. The subject of almost universal derision is a Ukrainian family who keep everyone else awake with their nightly loud parties. Despite the boredom and frustration, coupled with a lack of WiFi, it rarely occurs to anyone to reach out and connect outside their family circle until a tragic event at the end. VERDICT Moss (Ghost Wall) seems to be commenting on the disconnect and isolation of modern life, though the vacationers' travails can make for dreary reading. The campers have a perfect opportunity to form community but fail to do so, while the Ukrainians, whose othering Moss highlights by not providing their viewpoint, seem to be the only campers who embrace enjoyment of life.—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Morven Christie’s limpid, Scottish-inflected voice and gentle, enticing tone combine to lure listeners into Sarah Moss’s astonishing seventh novel as effectively as mermaids tempt sailors into the sea. Set in a Scottish holiday camp over the course of a long, rainy day, the novel comprises a series of linked vignettes. Mostly moored inside their cabins, the camp’s inhabitants watch their neighbors while navigating their travel companions and washed-out holidays. Each vignette is its own vivid, heartfelt, mysterious, or humorous story that builds with the others toward an unexpected and shocking final drama. Christie’s narration keeps listeners rapt while maintaining rhythm with the action, be it a runner’s stride, lovers’ desire, a child’s watchfulness. The result is a memorable marriage of remarkable fiction and outstanding performance. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
★ 2020-10-27
A multivoiced narrative set in the Scottish Highlands, this broodingly suspenseful and engagingly intimate novel is a miniature portrait of family life in various forms, of old age and childhood, framed by wild nature, which becomes a character in itself.
“The sky is lying on the loch,” this meditative novel begins. And summer rain does indeed fall ceaselessly and torrentially on the Scottish lakeside retreat where a handful of vacationing families, each renting a cabin, become erstwhile and wary neighbors. Just a “huddle of chalets,” as one bored womanremarks, with “eyes at every window.” Most are English, some are Scottish, and one family—of nighttime noisemakers—is Romanian. The Scots resent the English (“they could stay in England with…their nasty little government”), and everyone disapproves of the Romanians (“You’re supposed to have left, you know, people like you,” one child taunts another). Each protagonist also battles the weather—the mother on her dawn run, the teenager kayaking too far in choppy water, the child on the perilous swing that dangles over the loch, the old man walking—which proves an escape from family tedium but may also harbor a hidden menace. “The sky has turned a yellowish shade of grey,” we are told. “Small creatures in their burrows nose the air and stay hungry. There will be deaths by morning.” With consummate skill, the author reveals the inner lives of a handful of characters, their meditations by turns intensely moving and laconically humorous (married sex, a middle-aged wife reflects, is “like oiling your bike chain, doesn’t have to be fun but it stops things falling apart”) while conjuring up both landscape and atmosphere with lyrical delicacy. The novel that began at dawn ends at nightfall with a satisfying though awful denouement that steers clear of melodrama.
A psychologically acute depiction of modern Britain through the lens of one rainy summer day.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940177801872 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 01/12/2021 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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