Hermit

A stirring and evocative meditation on the human urge for solitude across the centuries, which subtly blends memoir and nature writing with a journalist's eye for detail and a poet's clarity of vision.

Stu Hennigan, author of 'Ghost Signs'

Hermit is as much a story of escape as one of finding one's place in the landscape. A blend of memoir, nature writing and a re-examination of women throughout history who have sought solace in solitude, Jade Angeles Fitton has written a stunning and original book about loss, love and overcoming one's demons.

Joanna Pocock, author of 'Surrender'

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.

Niall Griffiths, author of 'Stump'

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.

Catherine Taylor

A fascinating odyssey through the origins and practice of solitude, fused with Fitton's profoundly affective personal journey, which immerses the reader in both the wild landscape's mythology and its healing potential. A beautiful, chimeric book.

Tom Vowler, author of 'What Lies Within'

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.

Cal Flyn, author of 'Islands of Abandonment'

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.'

M. John Harrison, author of 'Climbers'

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

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.

The Bookseller

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

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.

Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell

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.

Katherine May, author of Wintering