I’ve only just finished reading SUMMERWATER by Sarah Moss; despite all the praise for GHOST WALL last year, it’s the first Sarah Moss novella I’ve ever read, and my feelings about it are as choppy as the waters of the loch near where the book is set.

This is one of those books where you’re not sure what’s going on until you’re about three-quarters of the way though. It’s broken up into little sections. Each one is a different point of view from characters staying in a holiday resort surrounding the aforementioned loch somewhere in rural Scotland, and, despite it being the peak of summer, it won’t stop raining.

I can see why people rave about Moss’ writing — it’s very evocative. You get the sense of the claustrophobia that the characters feel, and feel the unsettling pressure cooker tension building, culminating in a crescendo that I was not entirely expecting…

… Despite everything positive I mentioned above, I was not a fan of the stream-of-consciousness style of writing that reminded me a little of Milkman in some parts — I had to read several passages over twice and read it out loud to fully understand them. Maybe I’m a lazy reader, but I got a little annoyed at having to backtrack and lose my reading momentum.

Nitpicky? Perhaps. But I’ll be interested in hearing other reviewers' thoughts once this book comes out in August. Thank you, #NetGalley and @panmacmillan for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

In ‘Summerwater’ Sarah Moss takes readers to an idyllic Scottish holiday place  near a lake for apart of a day. There are 12 people in different cabins living and who are all reconciled but differently,  to the fact that the constant rain is playing spoilsport to their holiday plans. Cooped inside, the scenes play out mostly in the mind of the characters we read about, giving us everyday like scenes that happens to people:one half of an engaged couple looking at domesticity, sexual fantasies and notions of being truthful; an older couple mulling over the changes that life brings; a mother worn out from housework and motherhood; a parent - teen age angst play out and so on.

The lack of a conventional plot, the way the author takes readers into the thoughts of a few selected characters make you feel like you are missing out on the larger picture but in reality, the device works so well for one sees the way each character’s thoughts are almost meditative, some cruel, some alarming. 

Summerwater is nothing like I have read! A rather short book, the word flow is like raindrops…a constant pitter-patter that keeps on assailing your senses – in the wetness, the sound. It is not so much a story or plot as it is about isolated lives living in a common situation, how they are disconnected and yet connected by the same and different things. If you love words and how they flow to build something wondrous and different, this is the book for you.

Set over the course of one day, this is a collection of seemingly unrelated snippets of the lives of different holiday makers in a lochside holiday park in Scotland. It's a miserable, rainy day and everyone is stuck inside - families with children of varying ages and levels of enjoyment in their choice of holiday destination, an elderly couple who have spent every summer in their lodge, grumpy teenagers and raucous party animals disturbing the peace. Interspersed with these slices of human life are vignettes of the nature around them and how it is effected by the persistent rain. It is really unclear where this book is going until it gets there - but no spoilers as it would be a tragedy to ruin this book. What I will say is that I was left a bit shellshocked... I've never read Sarah Moss before, but I definitely want to read more. Her writing style is really great, there is almost something of a social commentary going on in this book and she is so good at capturing nuance. This is a quick but powerful read.

I thought the writing was lovely, especially the descriptions of the nature & surrounding which were evocative.
However I just didn't like any of the characters, maybe that was the point?

I thought the climax / ending just felt rushed. For me too much focus on the mundane thoughts of the characters. I would've enjoyed the book more if there was less of this & more about the fall out from the final scene

Summerwater, the latest book by Sarah Moss, takes place in a cabin park in the Scottish Highlands during a wet, rainy, summer day. Throughout the story, we meet and follow 12 characters, all of them absorbed in their own middle-class, relatively privileged, thoughts, All of the characters are too trapped by their routines, by their (occasionally) petty everyday worries, to care about each other. To look beyond their cabins. To share their stories, To communicate with each other. Until tragedy strikes.

Moss's writing style brings to life each character distinctively. Each of them with a different voice. All of them incredibly normal and unique at the same time. This short book explores the different forms of motherhood, of ageing, of being a teenager, of approaching sex. None of the characters, however, is interesting enough for me to be fully gripped by the story, especially when tragedy strikes. And, in fairness, tragedy strikes too quickly, in a matter of a few pages, with the ending feeling too rushed.

Excellent, atmospheric novel set by a Scottish loch where unrelated families are trying to make the most of a rainy summer holiday. It's both funny, realistic and also imbued with impending tragedy. The ending is so unexpected it takes your breath away. I enjoyed Sarah Moss's previous novella, Ghost Wall and although completely different there are similarities in tone and setting. Highly recommended.

The book is set in a cabin park near a loch in Scotland. The book unfolds through the internal voices of the people who are visiting the cabins on holiday either as couples or as families with children. The story unfolds over a day and it is through the individual characters that one learns about their lives and struggles. The backdrop is the incessant rain and the presence of the loch. From the start there is a sense that something will go wrong and the tension slowly builds as strangers appear and create disruption and disturbance.

The book is very descriptive both of the landscape and the internal thoughts of each of the characters. The book draws you in and is a fluent read but all the time there is a growing sense of menace and disquiet. Moss is masterful in building up the tension and raising leads that disappear with the beating down of the rain.

An excellent read and a beautifully written book.

It never rains but it pours. Sarah Moss is a master of character and atmosphere and Summerwater is no exception. Like Ghost Wall it is seething with tension as she lets us into the innermost thoughts of a series of characters, all holidaying on the banks of a rainy Scottish loch. The characters throb with resentment and boredom in the wilderness, reflecting on their lives and relationships, making assumptions about one another as they glimpse temporary neighbour through the mist and rain. She makes the most of a setting that is wild and isolated and the claustrophobia intensifies the gnawing frustration that is so clear in the internal monologues. These monologues are one of the things she does best, revealing complex and contradictory personalities full of conflicting actions and opinions. Moss writes people brilliantly in all their darkness and light and the tension is on a steady rise as relationships fray and people pass judgement until the final dramatic conclusion.

Having a couple of Sarah Moss novels languishing near the bottom of my TBR pile for some time now was all the persuading I needed to read an advance copy of Summerwater.

It’s summer, it’s Scotland, it’s raining and the story takes place over 24 hours. At first I didn’t quite understand what was going on and thought ‘oh no not stream of consciousness’ but … within a paragraph or two I was hooked. The narrative is so real and honest. From the mother who is obsessed with exercise as a way of escaping her family, the sexually engaged young woman whose mind keeps wandering during the act, the young man who puts his life at risk to the elderly couple who travel to a well visited favourite spot only to do their own thing when they get there. I found myself chuckling away at various spot-on behavioural observations. I’m not overly enamoured with lengthy detailed descriptions of nature and landscapes but there is just enough between each character narrative to give us pause from the interiority of the characters. It soon becomes clear that solitude and escape is what ties all these vividly drawn characters and scenes together. You also very quickly realise that something terrible is going to happen and the need to discover what it is makes this compulsive reading.

This short novel is emotionally intelligent and very evocative of the darker, more hidden desires and feelings of individuals. I absolutely loved it and will now move my Sarah Moss tbr pile nearer the top.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for my ARC

I love books written over a short timescale. This is set over 1 day up in the highlands of Scotland. I don't want to give out any spoilers here, but this is a well written book, easy to read in a day that apcks quite a suprising end. Highly recommended

Sarah Moss' Summerwater is set in a gloomy holiday park in Scotland. We follow the narratives of at least 12 of the holidaymakers and their experiences throughout one torrentially wet day, when most of them are confined to their cabins.

The narrators range from small children to the elderly and the author writes them all extremely well and makes them entirely believable.

We see different parts of the day from different people's perspectives and it's really interesting to fit all of these people together amongst their own families and others as you get further in.

The conclusion is brilliant and so unexpected. It's an interesting flip on the villain/s of the piece and indeed, the perpetrator and explanation is very subtle. You have to have been paying attention!

Such an atmospheric book that sneaks up on you. Definitely one to read on a rainy day, but even if you're reading on a beach you'll feel the cold and wet!

About 95% of what I read falls into crime/mystery/thriller categories but there are exceptions to this rule. After reading Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss I've been keen to read some of her fiction and was lucky to be approved to read Summerwater on NetGalley.

It's around midsummer on a dated Scottish holiday park and the occupants of the loch side cabins are trapped by the torrential (but perhaps not unexpected) rain in the isolated location. Over 24 hours we get an insight into the lives of the holiday makers - from the early morning runner to the retired doctor.

As the day progresses the point of view switches between many different occupants, with a diverse range of ages and points of view. These snapshots take the form of something akin to a 'stream of consciousness'. Despite this format, which doesn't particularly lend itself to a more literary style, the writing is spot on - funny, graphic, dark but all well-observed and with excellent insight - in these brief sections we really get an understanding of the characters. The inner monologues add a feeling of pace despite there being little action, although as I read crime fiction a lot I was perhaps more open to the darker undertones.

Woven into these lives are points of view that reflect the breadth of the political spectrum, giving a real reflection on the mix of people you could come across, I do wonder if this might feel dated quite quickly. Reading this during the early part of 2020, when we're all isolated, I can see a number of parallels between real life and fiction - as we're all trapped in our homes and keeping an eye on our neighbours!

This is short read at around 150 pages but without any preamble it packs in a wealth of variety and leads to a surprising climax. Well worth a read - I look forward to getting my hands on a hardcopy when it's published.

I absolutely loved this short, wonderfully written novel (can Sarah Moss even disappoint me?), but it's hard to describe what kind of book it really is. Sure, it's about 12 people on holiday in a a Scottish cabin park, being more or less isolated because of the continuing downpour. And it's about thinking, thoughts, inner life. The style is beautiful as well. This novel may be hard to sell though. I do hope I'll be able to handsell this title!
Thank you Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for the ARC.

I read this during the first days of the pandemic lock down and it perfectly matched what was happening with the world.
This tells the stories of individuals taking a holiday on a camp in Scotland. It's raining and each section focusses on a different character.
They are all in turn interested and judgemental about the other families.
The book shows a post Brexit Britain where the non British family are regarded with suspicion and almost hate.
I enjoyed the book as I have travelled to this area of Scotland and found it very reminiscent of past holidays of I have taken.

There are echoes here of ‘Ghost Wall’, Sarah Moss’ previous novel, with a group of people of varying ages and backgrounds, family and relationships brought together in an isolated setting, with its tensions and claustrophobia heightening as the days go by. There is less action here, though, and the fairly insubstantial story is told in a series of inner narratives from each of the characters, holed up in a Scottish holiday park in the pouring rain. Each of them yearns to escape the others, to be on their own for a while, and the author has a great skill for writing the thought processes of a teenager or a child, for example, or the partners in a long marriage or a new sexually-charged relationship. I enjoyed all of this well enough, the different voices punctuated by short snapshots of the natural world outside, and it stopped just short of going on too long. There is an underlying sinister feel to their observations - you just know something terrible is going to happen but the pointers could lead in any number of directions. What does happen was not what I expected and, dare I say it, something of a disappointment given the alternative endings I had imagined.

A pale shadow of ‘Ghost Wall’ and other novels I have enjoyed by this author, not one I would particularly recommend to new readers of Sarah Moss’ work.

This was my second book by Sarah Moss after reading and thoroughly enjoying Ghost Wall last year. It’s established her as one of my favourite authors and I’m very much looking forward to reading her back catalogue, many of which are already sat on my tbr.

This book is set at a holiday park in Scotland during a wet summer. There is an undercurrent of prejudice running through the novel and each chapter is told from a different holidaymaker's perspective in a stream of consciousness style. The character construction is excellent and Moss writes convincingly from a diverse range of perspectives including a retired doctor irritated by his wife, a mother wondering what to do with a rare hour without her children and a teenage girl sneaking out to meet a man living in a tent by the loch.
From the beginning you know something dreadful is going to happen and this certainly makes for compulsive reading. Just when you think you’ve guessed what it is, the next character changes your mind!

The persistent rain is a character in itself, and as in Ghost Wall, the descriptions of nature are a real strong point of Moss’ writing.

It’s a short and perfectly formed novella with very clever and emotionally intelligent writing.

Thanks to #NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy of this book.

I'd never read anything by Sarah Moss, although several of her books are on my TBR, and a novella set over 24 hours on the Highlands seemed like a great way to start. It took a few pages to get used to the style, at first I didn't quite understand what was going on, but once you get into the story, it's hard to put down.

The change in point of view not only makes it fast-paced, but also more entertaining, since you aren't stuck in someone's head long enough to get bored of them. The detailed description of nature, however, didn't really tell me anything; I felt like I could skip it and not miss anything.

The last half of the book had me biting my nails and I kept waiting and waiting for this tragedy to happen, thinking of what of the many dangers we'd seen during the day would trigger it... and then the ending happened, and frankly, it was disappointing. It's hard to feel bad about bad characters who do bad things when the predictable bad consequence happens.

I guess this is a case of "Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way", and the joy is supposed to come from the characters' previous thoughts and not the ending. And I did immensely enjoy the style and the characters. But the 150 page build-up doesn't have that much of an impact without an equally exciting resolution.

I am a massive fan of Sarah Moss (particularly The Tidal Zone and Night Waking, although I also loved Ghost Wall) and I was devastated that I missed the boat on physical proofs of Summerwater. I was delighted to find the ebook on NetGalley!

Summerwater surpassed my high expectations and I read it in one intense sitting. Focusing on a few bored families suffering through their holidays in a rain-battered Scottish cabin park, this is a claustrophobic, well-observed and witty short novel. Incredibly atmospheric.

In my opinion, this is up there with her best.

This is the first of Sarah Moss’s books I’ve read but I knew within a few pages it won’t be the last. Certainly by the time Justine wondered if someone might die or at least dislocate a shoulder wrestling a sports bra, I felt this was for me.
All the characters appear to have in common is spending a wet summer holiday on an isolated cabin park next to a loch. Their inner monologues are dense, thoughts coming tripping one after the other. Each is interesting enough (and some funny enough – Millie’s failure to keep her mind on the job springs to mind) that I was slightly disappointed to leave them. Until I was gripped by the next.
You could say that Summerwater is about nothing, there being little plot. On the other hand, it’s about everything: life, love, family, health, the world. I became used to the rhythm of each person telling their story. Then in a whoosh it was all over and the rain had stopped. And my head was left in the Trossachs and my heart sank like lead.

In Summerwater we get snapshots of the lives of twelve holidaymakers, staying in a remote Scottish Highlands chalet park, over the course of 24 hours on one of the longest days of summer. This should have been idyllic, a holiday to remember, but instead the rain is relentless and families are forced to either face the elements or stay cooped up in claustrophobic accommodation.

Each chapter focuses on an individual in a semi stream-of-conscious style, and this is what I love most about Sarah Moss's writing. The sense of interiority is rich, with hidden desires and darker feelings sat alongside humorous moments of flitting back and forth between wants and what is more socially, or environmentally, acceptable. A mum left with an unexpected hour to herself finds time passing by too quickly, hard to settle on what she really wants to do. Her thoughts turn to her body and that coarse nipple hair she wants to remove, before talking herself down - that this isn't the way her husband would have anticipated her spending a rare solo hour. A woman, during sex with her fiancee who is determined for them to climax simultaneously, finds herself fantasising about Don Draper (with a back-and-forth conscience checking regarding Mad Men scenes) but also, bacon rolls.

Scenes such as these provide lightness in their humour, as well as the relatable sense of being cooped up and the tension that can bring. Outdoor scenes, however, feel dynamic and urgent. We begin with a mother's early-morning run, and later a teenager's need to get out sees him struggling against nature in his kayak.

What ties the various scenes together seems to be the characters' craving for, or at least an engagement with, solitude and escape. Seeing different members of the same family or relationship gives another perspective too - how people fit together, and how they don't - the sense of disconnection in never fully understanding the other. There's also the sense of movement, of the body in motion, and often in relation to another force - walking or running through the wind and the rain, sex, canoeing in treacherous waters. Then with that, an underlying foreboding sense of risk. Whether from the sheer power of nature, the fallibility of the human body, or - the risk of the other. Amidst the group of British holidaymakers there's a family from elsewhere, and they're making noise at night. Too much noise. We see someone claim to not be racist and yet how quickly their irritation turns to dehumanisation.

It's this sense of movement, and pent-up energy, that makes this a compelling read with an explosive finale that after so much downtime held more power.

Moss's language can be very descriptive, and I commented in another recent book review that I'm not a big lover of wordy nature descriptions. It feels different here, though. Purposeful. It almost feels like another character in itself, the sense of pushing back. Between people-focused chapters there are interludes where nature is the focus, and here too it's apparent how within nature, even while it may seem still, there is always movement and tension.

This didn't blow me away as much as The Tidal Zone, perhaps that had the power it did because of it being my first Sarah Moss - feeling in awe of her style of writing, taking it in for the first time. I also seem to love books more when they can really go into depth, whereas here as much as there is interiority our time is split between the characters. I also wished we could have had the perspective of the European family, though I can understand the difficulty of voicing this and also the literary benefit of them staying the unknown 'other'. It is clear it is the characters doing the judging and not the author, and yet I feel there could have been a further opportunity for empathy here.

Still, I loved the pace and tension of this - the split between sedentary passing of time and genuine risks that could so easily turn to disaster at any moment. And I will always love how Sarah Moss writes about people, what it is to be human (to be a child, a teenager, a mother, a father, to live with a declining body and a failing mind), how connected and yet how separate we are, and just how ridiculous we can so often be.