Hermit, Jade Angeles Fitton
Hermit, Jade Angeles Fitton
List: $15.75 | Sale: $11.03
Club: $7.87

Hermit
A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place

Author: Jade Angeles Fitton

Narrator: Jade Angeles Fitton

Unabridged: 8 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 05/18/2023

Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

When Jade's partner leaves the barn that they moved into just weeks before, he leaves a dent in the wall and her life unravelled. Numbed from years in the destructive relationship, she faces an uncertain future and complete solitude. Slowly, with the help of Devon's salted cliffs and damp forested footpaths, Jade comes back to life and discovers the power of being alone.

Through conversations with other hermits across the world, Fitton sheds light on an extraordinary and misunderstood way of living which has survived into the 21st century - from monks, to hikikomori, and the often ignored female hermit.

Lyrically written, this is an inspirational story of recovery, of finding home and of celebration of solitude in the natural world.

©2023 Jade Angeles Fitton (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sophy on December 04, 2023

3.5 stars I deliberated over this rating before settling on 3.5 stars. The first 30 pages or so of this book nearly made me give up; Jade's story was so harrowing that I thought it was going to be some sort of tragi/misery-porn type memoir, masquerading as a book on hermits! After trawling through t......more

Goodreads review by Katrina on April 24, 2023

Jade talks very honestly and often shockingly about her abusive relationship from the start of the book, which I found painful to read (perhaps her writing is too good for comfort). The story of her breaking out of that relationship, taking time to be alone and learning to love and trust herself/oth......more

Goodreads review by Jodie on February 18, 2023

The desire to live alone in the woods, by the sea or on the moors is strong. In Hermit, we see what that is really like in modern day England. Hermit is a bit of everything: nature writing, a memoir on abuse, thoroughly-researched non-fiction on those who choose to separate from society, a story of......more

Goodreads review by Elaine on June 16, 2023

This book is one of the only books I will ever read more than once! I need to read this book over and over and I will. This story reached me on a level I didn’t expect it to, and I asked about the ARC because I knew it was something I needed to hear at this time in my life. Still, even knowing that,......more

Goodreads review by Lucy on August 26, 2024

This spoke to my soul.......more

Quotes

A dreamy, beautiful book about the consolations of solitude. In Hermit, Jade wanders a sunlit, windswept, delicately drawn landscape of loss and longing, and in doing so finds the stillness at the centre of herself. Hopeful and open-hearted.

A compelling, engrossing memoir that beautifully encapsulates the human experience (both the misery and the magic) of suddenly finding yourself rebuilding life from the ground up, alone. I loved it. Emma Gannon

Hermit is a beautiful written debut memoir drawing on the hermetic tradition that shows the power of being alone.

A book of spellbinding brilliance by a writer of rare talent.

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. The Bookseller

Written with often startling beauty, Hermit is an intimate account of the healing power of solitude. Though deeply personal, it explores universal truths about society and the human condition. A brave, brilliant and important book.

I loved Hermit, hoovered it down in a day. Jade Angeles Fitton's life - from barns to huts to islands - is cleverly, brilliantly but honestly recorded. her search for boundary lines between herself and the beauty of the world is both engaging and true. She leaves us with an intense emotional understanding both of contemporary loneliness and the hermit's older companion, solitude - that state in which 'every living thing knows a secret.'

In Hermit, Jade Angeles Fitton embarks on a heroic quest of self-discovery, creating in the process a beautiful, sensitive work about the challenges and solace of the natural world.

Fitton brings heart, body and soul to this compelling story of deliberate living. A book about solitude - hers and other people's - that runs rich with love for the natural world Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep

In Hermit, Fitton has actually created that very thing for which she yearns: a place of serenity and calm and reflection. Reading it, I felt the overheated racket of the world recede, even as I attained further knowledge of its workings. It's a forest glade of a book: a hidden shore; a moorland escarpment where the voices you hear are the only ones that truly matter. It's a peace not reached without struggle and fight, which is true of all the best and necessary things.

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List