{"id":263708,"date":"2025-05-30T07:51:22","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T07:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/ripeness-by-sarah-moss-life-has-no-form-you-dont-get-to-choose\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T07:51:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T07:51:22","slug":"ripeness-by-sarah-moss-life-has-no-form-you-dont-get-to-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=263708","title":{"rendered":"Ripeness by Sarah Moss: \u2018Life has no form, you don\u2019t get to choose.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-34426\" src=\"https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Ripeness-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"Cover image for Ripeness by Sarah Moss\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Ripeness-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Ripeness.jpg 325w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\"\/>I was delighted when Sarah Moss\u2019s <em>Ripeness<\/em> popped through my letter box. It\u2019s the eighth book by her I\u2019ve reviewed on this blog, starting way back in 2013 with her Icelandic memoir, <a href=\"https:\/\/alifeinbooks.co.uk\/2013\/09\/names-for-the-sea-sarah-mosss-adventures-in-iceland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Names for the Sea<\/em><\/a>. This new one sees a woman in her seventies remembering the months she spent in Italy as a seventeen-year-old in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sea pinks ruffle along the roadside, and the light of the sea shifts as if a stagehand in the gods has changed it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Edith is the child of an unconventional marriage between a Derbyshire hill farmer and a refugee whose family disappeared in the Holocaust. She\u2019s a bright child, largely raised by her practical grandmother, her mother an intermittent presence as she travels Europe hoping to find some trace of her family. She barely knew her elder sister yet it is Edith who her mother insists must attend Lydia at the Italian villa in the Lakes where she\u2019s holed up, heavily pregnant and angry at this interruption in her ballet career. The months that follow will be formative for Edith who grows from a na\u00efve, young woman into one who will make her way confidently across Europe, taking up her place at Oxford. Since then, her life has been more conventional than might have been expected \u2013 marriage, a child, a career in further education \u2013 but now she\u2019s divorced and settled in the west of Ireland, belonging yet not belonging, in charge of her own life yet not entirely comfortable in her autonomy. Her best friend\u2019s discovery of a half-sibling brings to mind the child that Lydia had to give up over fifty years ago.<\/p>\n<p><em>She knows the friendliness isn\u2019t friendship, she knows she\u2019ll never be a local anywhere now, but isn\u2019t it better to live with people whose default is friendliness, in a country where kindness, the performance of kindness, is a way of life whether people actually feel like it or not?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Alternating with the present day, Edith\u2019s narrative of her time in Italy is addressed to Lydia\u2019s child, written for him should he ever contact her own son. It\u2019s a structure that works well, Edith\u2019s memories of that time contrasting with the woman she\u2019s become, relishing her life alone, a conscious outsider yet involved. Moss explores themes of belonging, identity, autonomy, family, motherhood and community through Edith\u2019s story, her background and the backgrounds of those around her. Edith thanks the Ukrainian dentist, not allowed to practice in Ireland, who serves her cake in the local caf\u00e9, remembering that her mother\u2019s ancestors fled Ukrainian pogroms; her kind, generous best friend is offended by Edith\u2019s reaction to the villagers\u2019 demonstration against housing refugees close by; Edith ponders her own uneasiness with her privilege, her status as a blow-in and an English one, at that, with all its historical associations. I enjoyed this powerful, reflective novel which has the added bonus of some vividly evocative descriptions of the natural world woven through it.<\/p>\n<p>Laura wasn\u2019t quite as taken as me. You can read her review <a href=\"https:\/\/drlauratisdall.wordpress.com\/2025\/05\/28\/reading-diary-may-13th-to-may-26th-2025\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Picador Books: London 9781529035490 304 pages Hardback<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded\" id=\"like-post-wrapper-52859811-34425-68395ef1f13af\" data-src=\"https:\/\/widgets.wp.com\/likes\/?ver=14.6#blog_id=52859811&amp;post_id=34425&amp;origin=alifeinbooks.co.uk&amp;obj_id=52859811-34425-68395ef1f13af\" data-name=\"like-post-frame-52859811-34425-68395ef1f13af\" data-title=\"Like or Reblog\">\n<h3 class=\"sd-title\">Like this:<\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"button\"><span>Like<\/span><\/span> <span class=\"loading\">Loading&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"sd-text-color\"\/><a class=\"sd-link-color\"\/><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was delighted when Sarah Moss\u2019s Ripeness popped through my letter box. It\u2019s the eighth book by her I\u2019ve reviewed on this blog, starting way back in 2013 with her Icelandic memoir, Names for the Sea. This new one sees a woman in her seventies remembering the months she spent in Italy as a seventeen-year-old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":186769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[94562,3036,4629,10122,3333,27703,27185,73361,4526,73363],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-263708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-british-contemporary-fiction","tag-choose","tag-dont","tag-form","tag-life","tag-moss","tag-picador-books","tag-ripeness","tag-sarah","tag-sarah-moss"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ripeness by Sarah Moss: \u2018Life has no form, you don\u2019t get to choose.\u2019 - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=263708\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ripeness by Sarah Moss: \u2018Life has no form, you don\u2019t get to choose.\u2019 - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was delighted when Sarah Moss\u2019s Ripeness popped through my letter box. 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