Ripeness by Sarah Moss – a beautifully written novel of place and identity

An English woman’s tale of migration, alternating between mid-60s Italy and present-day Ireland, considers family heritage and the treatment of refugeesSarah Moss’s post-Brexit novels, Ghost Wall, Summerwater and The Fell, have dealt centrally with the anxieties and hostilities of the white working and middle classes in contemporary Britain. This trio of short, vivid works has also quietly established Moss as a revered chronicler of the political present. Though Ripeness bears many of the hallmarks of her recent fiction – evocative descriptions of the natural world abound, no speech marks used, chapter titles plucked suggestively out of the narrative – it also departs from it. It is longer, slower, European in setting, and its political critiques are ultimately muted.Ripeness is structured in alternating narrative strands, both following an English woman called Edith: one as a septuagenarian living comfortably in the west of Ireland in the post-pandemic present, and another as a bookish, Oxford-bound 17-year-old travelling to Italy in the late 60s. These strands are initially connected by stories of babies given up. In the present, Edith’s best friend Méabh is contacted by an unknown older brother who was adopted and raised in America and now wants to “see where he comes from”. In the historical strand, Edith is travelling to help her older sister, a professional ballerina, pregnant with a child she will almost immediately relinquish. Together, a textured and affecting story about place and identity emerges. Continue reading...

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