Summerwater

Almost exactly a year ago, I was blown away by Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall (thanks to Penni Russon for the recommendation). I wasn't aware when I borrowed Summerwater that a TV miniseries of it was released last year -- the reviews I've found have been lukewarm at best, but it's a weird coincidence, and if it pops up on my screen I'll probably at least have a look at it. It's an odd choice for an adaptation, because each of the chapters in Summerwater is so internal -- each voiced from the point of view of a different character, and with some overlap of events, but each with a very distinct attitude and each one very self-absorbed. It's not easy to dramatise a narrative which depends so heavily on internal monologues, and it sounds as if the TV writers didn't quite pull it off.

I do love a book written from different perspectives, even one like this which relies on a mounting sense of tension rather than any startling events, until the very end. It traces a single day in a rainy Scottish campground, where half a dozen families and couples are marooned by the weather. It's not a long book, and it would make a good teaching aid for demonstrating what 'voice' is and how it works. My one quibble would be that we don't get to see inside the heads of the 'outsider' family, the Ukrainian mother and her young daughter, in whose cabin noisy parties are held every night to the fury of the other guests. I'm guessing this was a deliberate choice, to keep them firmly in the role of outsiders, but it still makes me slightly uneasy that we don't get the same insight into their lives as we get into everyone else's.

Sarah Moss is a beautiful and skilful writer, but her subject matter is unrelentingly dark. In a way I'm glad that Summerwater and Ghost Wall are no longer than they are.