Reviews

Cold Earth by Sarah Moss

e_l_bee's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

not my favorite sarah moss book, but still a sarah moss book, which is to say: good and tense and thought provoking! i absolutely love the way sarah moss can find meaning and joy while exploring the absolute fucking worst of people. she’s also such a nerd!!!! i love it!!!!

seasonal readers beware! do not be fooled as i was. this is a SUMMER book not a winter book. still good though. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Mental illness, Murder, and Death

Minor: Transphobia and Racism

chemi's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

redwavereads's review

dark reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Great setting, perfect for grey winter days.
The beginning was more interesting than the end, and that even though the end is quite dark and bleak.
Moss is one of my favourite writers, and you can see her talent in this first novel, but it’s a first novel and she grew later on.
Mainly in using her great sense of setting and beautiful writing style with a better pacing and plot.

sharon_s's review against another edition

tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

nakaripear's review against another edition

mysterious tense

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

soapyme's review against another edition

3.0

Needs more cannibalism.

keepreadingbooks's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I’d say Cold Earth is a mix between Night Waking and Ghost Wall. It has several of the elements that characterise especially Moss’ longer novels mixed with the suspense and often thriller-like feeling of her later, shorter ones. 

 

To shortly sum it up, six young researchers travel to a remote part of Greenland for a dig amidst the beginnings of what will turn out to be a pandemic. Shortly after arriving, they lose contact with the outside world and attempt to carry on as if nothing is out of the ordinary – except a lot is out of the ordinary, not least the fact that one of the characters is convinced that she sees the ghosts of the people they’ve come to dig out, or the fact that the plane that’s supposed to collect them might not be showing up, or that they’re running out of food. 

 

The story is told from multiple points of view, but starts – and spends the most time – with Nina. It’s told in a letter-diary form, with all of the characters writing to a certain “you”, whether that’s a partner or relative or someone else. Fair warning, unlikeable characters abound. Nina especially becomes quite insufferable. Personally, I always find unlikable characters interesting, and in such an isolated setting that dynamic was particularly intriguing. And the story IS the characters. The pandemic just provides an unexplained and anxiety-inducing background to what plays out between the six of them. I confess that I would have liked more details about it, but I think it was purposefully left as an unidentifiable threat, even in the sort-of epilogue at the end. I had difficulties playing along with the ghost subplot though, and I never found it particularly scary (and I’m usually a scaredy-cat). 

 

One of the things I love about Moss is how much research goes into her writing, something that is evident in Cold Earth too. She bothers to learn so much about her subject that it feels as if it’s been effortless to write. In many ways it’s quite classic Moss, but her storytelling has definitely evolved since this debut. It’s still a very accomplished novel, however, with many elements that usually appeal to me, and I think I might like this one better than Tidal Zone (my least favourite of hers) and even Signs for Lost Children (the slightly unnecessary sequel to Bodies of Light, which is genius). 

tomistro's review against another edition

3.0

Luin syksyllä Sarah Mossin Ghost Wall -romaanin ja lisäsin saman tien kaikki hänen kirjansa lukulistalleni. Kirja oli erinomainen kuvaus konservatiivisen isän hienovaraisen hirmuvallan ikeessä elävästä nuoresta, joka kaipaa yhteyttä itseensä ja ikätovereihinsa. Minua viehätti kirjassa erityisesti päähenkilön sisäisen maailman ja luonnossa olemisen kuvaus, se miten ympäröivä maailma historioineen vaikuttaa ajatuksiimme.

Nyt kun maaliskuussa luin Mossin debyyttiromaanin Cold Earth, oli hauska nähdä miten kirjailija käsittelee samoja teemoja erilaisen tarinan kontekstissa. (Ylipäätään on aina kiinnostavaa miten kirjailijat käsittelevät samoja lempiteemojaan tai -neuroosejaan uudelleen ja uudelleen.) Kirjassa joukko arkeologeja muuttaa kesäksi telttoihin Grönlannin rannikolle tutkimaan vanhaa viikinkiasutusta (vrt. Ghost Wallin historianelävöittäjät). Jokaisella on omat taakkansa kannettavanaan, syyt lähteä hetkeksi kauas kotona odottavasta ulkomaailmasta. Pikkuhiljaa ympäristö ja maasta esiin kaivettava historia alkaa vaikuttaa, välit kiristyvät ja kauhu alkaa hiipiä telttoihin.

Moss kirjoittaa jo esikoisessaan taitavasti muutaman erilaisen ihmisen sisäistä monologia ja luo vähän ärsyttäviä, mutta sympaattisia henkilöitä hahmoistaan - siis ihmisiä.

Yllätyin siitä, miten pitkälle varsinaiseen jännitykseen tai kauhuun romaani menee, myöhempien kirjojensa perusteella Moss on hienovarainen ja realistinen ihmisten ajatus- ja tunnemaailmojen kuvaaja. Ehkä Cold Earth ei kuitenkaan ihan "genrekirjallisuutta" ole, mutta lähellä käydään. Pääpaino on koko ajan inhimillisissä traumoissa, joiden parissa arkeologit ryhmässä, mutta erikseen, painiskelevat.

Lisämauste näin koronaviruksen päivinä kirjaan tulee maailmalla leviävän viruksen sivujuonteesta, jonka olisi kyllä voinut jättää tarinasta pois. Ehkä esikoiskirjailijan yksi perisynneistä on se, että ei uskalla luottaa pienieleisyyteen, vaan ahtaa romaaniin liikaa elementtejä?

Silti, hyvä alku, hyvä kirja itsessään ja mielenkiintoinen näkökulma Sarah Mossiin kirjailijana, vaikka onkin selvästi heikoin kolmesta nyt lukemastani kirjailijan romaanista.

definebookish's review against another edition

dark reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A pandemic novel, sort of. Not this pandemic – Cold Earth is Sarah Moss’s debut novel, published in 2009 – but a chillingly similar one, unfolding offscreen while, in shot, a group of student archaeologists excavate a lost Viking settlement.

In remote costal Greenland, six young people spend a summer digging, bickering, eating dehydrated noodles and trying to understand what killed off the area’s previous inhabitants, centuries ago. They have little contact with the outside world; connecting to the internet is expensive, and they don’t have smartphones. Oxford student Nina – not actually an archeologist, but a tagalong friend of the dig’s lead – is spooked from the outset, missing her fiancé and hearing noises from outside the tents at night.

The blurb didn’t really prepare me for how eerie this story is. It’s literary fiction meets cli-fi, seasoned with a sprinkling of speculative horror. It reminded me of both Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter and the 1990s movie The Hole, and yet also very much of the more recent Moss novels I’ve read – Ghost Wall and Summerwater. The writing isn’t as taut as either of those, but it is as tense and claustrophobic.

Like Ghost Wall, this is a tale of the past reverberating in the present. Sarah Moss’s characters always seem to inhabit the world in a way that emphasises how precarious their – and our – existence is. How small and fragile we are. How much at the mercy of the elements, and each other. Reading this one a decade after publication, that’s even more apparent. I’m very much here for the mounting sense of dread, and the food for thought Moss always leaves me with. A haunting, deeply unsettling read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Grief

savidgereads's review against another edition

3.0

I'm torn on this one. I kind of liked it a lot. I kind of thought it was a bit all over the place. One of those. The themes and ideas behind it were brilliant (archaeologists in Greenland where there might be ghosts or monsters and their might be an apocalyptic epidemic in the rest of the world) the delivery interesting. But occasionally it all stuttered along or jarred. But overall good. I think.