Hermit: A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place

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The problem I had with it was that the author clearly has unresolved trauma as a result of rape and domestic abuse.

Tristan Gooley This distinctive, alluring memoir, reminiscent of The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, relates how Fitton slowly learns to live alone and celebrate solitude in the natural world. They asked if she might sue me for writing that she took LSD and walking into Trinity College Chapel. By the end, I still felt she hadn’t quite found what she was after – although from where she started, she was in a much better place. In the 21st century is it possible to find this isolation, to become a hermit, with the constant hum of communication?

Modern life (earning enough money, accessing food, not having a car) eventually encroached and it was time to move on (several more times). Fitton takes us with her as she learns to live alone, left by her partner as he moves out of their secluded barn, just weeks after they moved in. She cleans holiday homes in the town she grew up in, all the while writing and longing to escape everything for a life is solitude and nature. They met me when I was really together and doing my Masters, which kind of felt like a fraudulent version of myself.

Bought as an audiobook as I believed that the story was about someone living as a hermit who was sharing their experiences. What’s always drawn me to writing is trying to access that place and feeling and experience, transforming a moment in time or a personal experience into something that has layers and is transcendental to a certain extent in regards to time, space, experience and emotion. Every time I see one, I am very tempted to apply (although always lack most of the essential skills required). I think the book would have benefitted from her admitting she isn't a hermit herself, but likes her own company A LOT, possibly due to some repressed PTSD as Louise Mullins says. But a couple of years after that piece was published an agent got in touch having read my piece and asked to hear more about my story – his response was: this is a book!Originally wracked by fear, Jade soon realises that he was the thing that kept her on edge, not their isolated home.

The author embarks on another relationship but as lockdown hits, they find themselves holed up on the Scilly Islands with a hermit-like existence of limited food and resources. It’s painful to read this section (let alone live it) and I only thank goodness the abusive relationship eventually came to an end. I am a sucker for a memoir about nature and isolation, and this is up there with the best I have read.In Hermit , Fitton has actually created that very thing for which she yearns: a place of serenity and calm and reflection. But, in reality, she is rarely unconnected with humans on any level, lives with either a boyfriend or husband for much of the book and only once withdraws herself from society on her own for any length of time and that has much to do with a natural reaction to recovering from the effects of trauma. In Hermit you’re balancing two very different things: the abusive relationship you were in, with this need to be solitary, although it feels essential to our understanding of the present day to know where you’d come from. This meant I was interested in hermits and recluses and the question of where, if anywhere, I fitted in—I was always most interested in those, like myself, that didn’t fit the hermit archetype of ‘old man with beard in the woods’, I wanted to explore people on the fringes who had been overlooked by both recent and ancient history.

The story of her breaking out of that relationship, taking time to be alone and learning to love and trust herself/others again was the main story arc. The definition of Hermit isn't so much the sticking to the constraints of a 'religious practice' but, infact, epitomised by the desire to isolate oneself from the myriad of societal constraints, and sadly the people that can make life toxic.I was conscious of laying out the defining moments of the relationship and how those moments led to me being in this barn in the middle of nowhere—but no more than that. A really healing, beautiful read for anybody who has experience with a toxic relationship and rural escape particularly. Reading it, I felt the overheated racket of the world recede, even as I attained further knowledge of its workings. The third stage of her time as a modern-day hermit co-incides with the covid lockdown of early 2021, a time when we were all hermits of a kind. It was also very moving to hear positive things from people who live a secluded life that is not necessarily of their own volition, and from those who’ve either felt ambivalent or ‘bad’ about their desire for reclusion.