'People do, sometimes, betray the wildness they carry their heads'.

In Summerwater, Moss flawlessly inhabits and presents the inner most thoughts of the families staying in the cabins at the edge of the Loch. The rain is torrential and relentless, and with the families trapped inside their cabins with nothing much to do but wonder what everyone else is doing, tension quickly builds. Distance, anonymity and hostility separates these families in spite of their proximate hyperawareness.

Through near stream-of-conscioussness narration, we're given windows into each cabin. POVs switch every chapter, with character changes being buffered by sparse vignettes that give nature it's own voice. Moss' ability to weave human and natural worlds together, to expose the animalistic parallels that unite all life, is so compelling. There were glimpses of Ghost Wall in Moss' subtextual discussion of human nature and the acts of violence we're all capable of, but this narrative is far more nuanced: the rising disquiet far more gradual and subtle. It was perfection, for me.

Throughout the prose, images repeat. Fragments of thought are caught again and again, like light flaming in sheets of rain. We share the same fear, the same aggravations, the same joys and the same fragile life.

'The sounds of water [...] become as constant as the sounds of blood and air in your own body. You would notice soon enough, if it stopped.'

Moss is definitely a new favourite author for me and I'm so excited to read her new novel, The Fell, soon.