She gives a sense, through her writing, of what it would mean to live with the sort of physical contact with the world that our ancestors had, to “walk the land as they walked it two thousand years ago”, and there’s a beauty and pleasure to it that we feel along with the students. The book is set within a few square miles of countryside, which the group criss-crosses endlessly on the hunt for food, and Moss describes the territory so richly that we come to feel we know every path, every pool, every bilberry patch. As his disapproval swells, so the atmosphere sours and the tension ratchets up.

It quickly becomes clear, though, that the ideological purity with which he approaches the expedition, and the social mores that he’s attempting to graft on to it (chief among them: women should know their place), sit uneasily alongside the professor’s jollity and the students’ hopscotching enthusiasm.

He’s passionate about the past – he yearns for it – and has taught himself all the skills of survival that the students are supposed to acquire, which is why he’s been invited along. Silvie’s father Bill is a bus driver by day and an amateur historian by night. For a few days they plan to live as the ancient Britons did: foraging for food dressing in tunics observing iron age rituals. Seventeen-year-old Silvie and her parents have joined Professor Slade and a group of students on a camping expedition in rural Northumberland. The novel unfolds over a hot week in high summer, some time towards the end of the 20th century. Sarah Moss has built her reputation brick by brick. She’s built her reputation brick by brick, book by book, and it’s a solid one – but she has yet to climb into the big league. In 2011 Night Waking was a word-of-mouth hit among sleep-deprived parents, and her standing is growing. Moss has previously published five novels and a memoir been shortlisted for prizes but not bagged a major one.

But if you’re wondering which novelist will reach the tipping point next, take my advice: put your money on Sarah Moss. Of course, it’s easy to identify the writers who have taken the second path once they have hit household-name status the real trick is spotting them before they get there. Hilary Mantel is an obvious example Tessa Hadley another Kamila Shamsie a third. The second is slower, quieter, less sensational but ultimately perhaps more sustainable: the steady brightening of a reputation over the course of several books, until finally it’s impossible to imagine a time when the author wasn’t a fixed point in the heavens. The first (and undeniably the ritzier) involves the publication of a novel, generally a debut, that bursts forth in such a blaze that its author remains permanently backlit by it. F or novelists, there are two paths to a place in the literary firmament.

The ghost wall sarah moss