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.

Honestly, Sarah Moss could re-write the phone book and I would love it. Summerwater is brilliant; simultaneously taut with growing tension and free-flowing like thoughts and, well, water.

The inhabitants of a holiday park in the Trossachs, temporary and permanent, human and fauna, are followed through one day of torrential rain. While we never see the cabins' residents directly interact, we see and hear them at a remove. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has grievances. We discover them piece by piece, the tension growing until the climax that night.

Moss is an unbelievably clever writer. She makes it look easy, when her forensic attention to tiny detail means it's anything but. A prize-winner, surely?

Sarah Moss writes so beautifully that I can't imagine not loving anything she does. Summerwater is no exception.

It consists of a wide range of POVs of a group of holidaymakers in the same sodden clutch of cabins at the end of a ten-mile track in Scotland. They don't know each other - and yet they are all watching each other from behind twitching curtains in the driving rain. As is the way of these places, the children's lives intersect more directly, while the parents stay mainly indoors.

Partly due to the weather, partly due to the mindsets they've brought along with them, many of the characters are bored and wishing something - anything - would happen. But the insides of their heads are so interesting that the reader doesn't feel the same. Not least because of the all-encompassing feeling of dread which hangs so thickly in the air that you can smell it. Something awful is going to happen. You just know it is. Something that will draw them all together and make this a holiday they'll always remember yet long to forget. But what is it? And whom will it befall? This is the cat and mouse game that Sarah Moss invites you to join her by this dreich and apparently unremarkable loch to play.

Every time I *thought* I knew what was about to happen, I was wrong. Then, when it did finally happen, I was astonished.

Personally, I felt it ended a bit sooner than I wanted, but I suspect when I've had a bit more time to process it I'll decide it ended at the perfect point. It's definitely left me wanting to read something else by her right now.

Oh, and it has one of the best sex scenes I've ever read. So funny and warm and true.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me see an advanced copy.

In ‘Summerwater’ Sarah Moss gives us twenty-four hours in the lives and minds of a disparate group of families holidaying far away from anywhere else in a cabin park in the Scottish Highlands. No one is having a good time. The weather is appalling; the cabins are damp and chilly; the neighbours are nosy and the boredom is palpable. Alex risks his life kayaking rather than sitting one moment longer in his cramped family cabin. Lola devises ways of bullying the patent-shoed Violetta. The doctor and his wife drive miles to sit in separate cafés, relieved to have some time apart. Justine runs her daily miles ludicrously early and Becky simulates pleasure in bed, rather more desirous of bacon butties than her fiancé’s attentions! This is a moving, funny, truthful examination of why people behave as they do, what they tolerate, and what they long for.
Moss’s characters always feel real. In this novel, she is particularly good at capturing the awkward teenage years: the inner fury, the exasperation at one’s family, the internal conversations during which parents are annihilated. We are also reminded of another common ‘holidays’ trait: the setting may be grim but the paying adults feel duty bound to stick it out even as they dream of a warm and welcoming home just a few hours away.
Whilst this novel does not have the narrative drive of Moss’s previous work, and may not be enjoyed by those who insist on a traditional story, it is a wonderful observation of familial relationships. In contrast to the human discontent, the surrounding natural world – both above and below ground – is portrayed as wonderfully adaptive and fully functioning, and serves the narrative as welcome interludes between the voices at the park. The reference to ‘The Ballad of Semmerwater’ by Sir William Watson, a poem learnt by Mary as a child, may appear relatively arbitrary other than to link with her mistake of ‘Summerwater’ as she kept on calling it all those years ago. However, it is not too far a stretch to suggest that the mean-spiritedness referenced in the poem also plays out through some Brexit attitudes in the camp. By the end of the novel the reader recognises that the rundown holiday cabins will likely enter folklore too, and for anything other than magical reasons.
My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.