Hermit: A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place

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A few people had told me my life was eccentric and would make an interesting book, but I wasn’t interested in writing personal narrative.

I found it difficult to even look at initially, so I left it on the window seat so I’d have to walk past it and force myself to get used to its presence. 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. That’s why I’ve come to appreciate creative nonfiction, as it’s such a magical way to honour the experience of living.

Bought as an audiobook as I believed that the story was about someone living as a hermit who was sharing their experiences. I had no undergraduate degree but was lucky to be accepted to do a Masters at London Metropolitan University. Reading nature written from a fresh perspective was wonderful—for too long these books have come only from the privileged.

On the steep and rocky island of Lundy, off the coast of North Devon, even with 20 or so people around, I felt she got closer to what she was looking for. If you don’t have a boyfriend or your friends around, or children, you’re seen as crazy or lonely, or sad.It’s the psychological behaviour of the insecure controller of such toxicity and there’s no protection from it empathy if not sympathy is the way the first part of the book reads for me.