Max Fletcher

A rainy day in the Highlands: Summerwater, by Sarah Moss, reviewed

Twelve holidaymakers stranded beside a Scottish loch reflect on inequality and environmental disaster in this dour contemporary parable

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issue 22 August 2020

There is an old Yorkshire tale about a prosperous town which, legend has it, once stood on the site of Lake Semerwater. A beggar comes looking for alms but is turned away by everyone, save for a poor couple. As he is leaving, he curses the proud townspeople and water rises up and floods their houses, leaving only the couple’s hovel high and dry.

In Summerwater, her seventh novel, Sarah Moss moves this tale north to a holiday resort by a Scottish loch and transforms it from a moralistic parable into a complex reflection on the contemporary situation. But she retains the haunting images of rising water and strangers being refused hospitality.

It is set over the course of a single, rainy summer’s day and is formed of the reflections of 12 holidaymakers as they contemplate the rising inequality, environmental disasters and generational divides of the modern world.

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