Her books deliver chilling insights into everything from family life to post-Brexit Britain. These are her favourite shorter reads
Sarah Moss’s novels pick you up and don’t let you go. From Ghost Wall, her superlative account of abuse and ancient rituals, to Summerwater, about a nightmarish day spent holidaying by a Scottish loch, her books are ultra-immersive must-reads that – often in just 200 pages or so – deliver chilling insights into everything from family life and masculinity to the hostilities and political undercurrents of post-Brexit Britain.
So, which are the books that have inspired her with their own narrative economy? Here, Moss shares her favourite novels under 200 pages.
Badenheim 1939 by Aharon Appelfeld
“Appelfeld’s Holocaust allegory was first published in Hebrew in 1978 and translated into English in 1980. It is set in an Austrian holiday resort in 1939, where most of the hotel’s residents can’t or won’t bear to see what is already on the way – as a mysterious ‘Sanitation Department’ announces that the Jewish population of the town must register with them. A sharp, witty book about ordinary human weaknesses in the face of unimagined systematic violence, which implicitly invites readers to ask ourselves what we are avoiding.”
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
“A spare and beautiful novel about a friendship between two girls on the cusp of puberty, living in a village in northern Norway. It’s about jeopardy and growing up; about communities and individuals, adventure and safety, losing and grieving. As perhaps in many of the best novels of any length, what’s not said presses through the pages.”
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
“The Moomins creator’s novel centres around three generations living together on a small island for the precious Nordic summer. Jansson explores being very old and very young; the notion of happiness despite or sometimes because of being sad; and boating and swimming and playing in a brief season of light.”
Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda
“A terrifying and gorgeous Catalan novel by a writer commenting on life in Catalonia, Spain and France in the early and mid 20th century. It is set in a village edged by a mysterious woods and river, where the townspeople are deeply and fervently committed to cruelty and violence. At once nightmarish and brilliant, it scrutinises human instincts and the way language can shift and twist under political pressure. Not bedtime reading, but a good book to think with.”
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
“I first read this as a teenager and it made my idea of contemporary literature change shape. Scottish, Gothic and gorgeous, taking girlhood seriously. It starts with the discovery of 16-year-old Janet’s body at the bottom of a stone staircase, and then flashes back to tell of her life as an imaginative adolescent stuck in a draughty castle with only literature, nature and her risqué aunt for comfort. Later editions are slightly longer, but the 1991 original came in at a cool 160 pages.”
‘Ripeness’ (Picador, £20) by Sarah Moss is longlisted for this year’s Wingate Prize
