Sarah Moss: Unhappy Campers

Soggy wellies and simmering resentments provide the backdrop to the latest novel from the scalpel-sharp Sarah Moss, who over the past decade has cemented a formidable reputation as one of Britain’s finest, wittiest writers.

Summerwater takes us inside the minds of twelve ill-fated holidaymakers at a remote Scottish cabin park. Trapped indoors over the course of a typically dreich summer day, their drizzly malaise curdles into something much darker when a mother and daughter arrive, and don’t quite fit in.

Picking at the scabs of Britain’s fraught social contract with sly humour and characteristic elegance, Moss builds a claustrophobic portrait of a makeshift community in which people are pulled apart by a toxic mix of proximity and isolation. Who could possibly relate? For this event, Moss teases out this knotty paradox with Lennie Goodings, Chair of Virago Press and author of A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Writers, Books and Virago.

This is a pre-recorded event.