Warning: Contains some spoilers, though if you've read other reviews, you'll find no surprises in mine.



This is a difficult book to review. At first I gave it two stars, then went back and changed it to three. I did so because the book is well-written and covers an interesting subject. This is borne out by the fact that there are 34,000+ ratings and 4500+ reviews. Humans are generally fascinated by stories about people living outside the parameters of "normal" society. Certainly the true tale of

Warning: Contains some spoilers, though if you've read other reviews, you'll find no surprises in mine.



This is a difficult book to review. At first I gave it two stars, then went back and changed it to three. I did so because the book is well-written and covers an interesting subject. This is borne out by the fact that there are 34,000+ ratings and 4500+ reviews. Humans are generally fascinated by stories about people living outside the parameters of "normal" society. Certainly the true tale of a modern-day hermit living an isolated life in the woods of Central Maine for 27 years and obtaining his food via a thousand break-ins into cabins nearby his wooded hermitage sparks interest. Christopher Knight lived this hermetic life from 1985 to 2013, when he was finally apprehended in the act of burglarizing a camp.



The reason I had given the book only two stars, at first, was due to my irritation with the author. He comes across in the book as intrusive and also a bit pathetic in his continued attempts to extract more info from Mr. Knight, despite the hermit's obvious desire for him to go away. During one unannounced visit, e.g., he asks Knight if he can have a handshake. Except for concluding a business deal, asking a man for a handshake is akin to asking a girl for a kiss. If you have to ask, you probably don't deserve one--and indeed Knight refused to shake his hand. The author, likewise, made a great many unannounced visits to Mr. Knight and this reached the point where, on the one occasion when he did write to say he was coming, Knight wrote and expressly told him NOT to come and threatened to call the police if he showed up. The author got all sorts of signs that he was unwelcome. Knight's family had all refused to talk to him and Knight was never portrayed as eager to meet with the author when he made his visits to see him in jail. The author seems to interpret Mr. Knight's willingness to talk to him as a sign he had made some sort of breakthrough and penetrated the hard shell of silence that Knight lived in for 27 years.



I'm guessing the author has never spent many nights in jail. Jail is boring, nerve-wracking and noisy, and must have been a horrendous experience for someone of Mr. Knight's sensibilities. It is not surprising to me that he would want to leave the confines of his cramped jail cell to meet a journalist, if for no other reason than as a break from the din and ennui. In fairness to the author, before his jail visits he had wooed (perhaps ingratiated is the better word?) the hermit with books and correspondence and had built a sort of tenuous connection with him. I think, though, that after his jail interviews, attending Knight's trial and talking to his secondary sources, he should have left well-enough alone and taken the hint that he had worn out his welcome.



This book could have easily been condensed into a "New Yorker" or "Longreads" story. I agree with some other reviewers that it was padded with information about hermits and speculation about Mr. Knight's mental health diagnosis. Some of this information was interesting, but read like it had been included more for the purposes of lengthening the book, which was a scant 191 pages, rather than as adding information germane to the story.



Many times while reading the book I felt sad and had a lot of sympathy for the hermit, Christopher Knight. America is not an easy place for an outlier to find a place to live undisturbed and also find a way to survive. I am reminded of the Charles Bukowski quote, "When you're on the row (skid row), you realize that everything is owned." Still, there are actually many hermits and semi-hermits existing here. There were many in the woods of Southern Oregon where I used to live. Most had some contact with the rest of the world, as they had to have some means to survive. Many would craft furniture from scrap wood and sell it at the local Saturday farmer's market. Others hunted mushrooms--the kind that will get you put in jail if the law catches you with them. There were also "barter fairs" there, where like-minded isolates could come together and trade for what they needed.



In some ways, I viewed the life of Mr. Knight as both a bold example of self-sustained living and, at the same time, a tragedy. A tragedy that resulted from the strictures of our society, coupled with the fact that Christopher Knight was only twenty when he took the impulsive step of driving his late-model Subaru from his home in Massachusetts to far Northern Maine. He abandoned the car in the woods, a car one of his brother's had co-signed for and ended up having to pay off, and headed south on foot toward his home country in Central Maine. It was an ill-thought-out and impetuous act by a man too young to have considered doing any serious research about how one could have lived a solitary life here in America without resorting to a life of criminality. In 1985, at the time of his disappearance, America was less regulated and restrictive than it is in 2019. Finding a way to live a hermit life would have been possible, though admittedly difficult. It would have probably involved some compromises, but less damaging ones than burglarizing other peoples' summer cabins and a camp for disabled children. There was no Hermitary.com, in those days, where a person could have gone online and perhaps gleaned hermit advice from several of the thousand or so members of this interesting "community" of isolates.



I concur with Petra's assertion that the book was not adequately fleshed out. Reading it, one gets the feeling a LOT is missing. Perhaps this is because the author was denied access by the family and his subject was a grudging participant not naturally given to pouring out his soul, even to close relatives, much less a stranger. It would have been curious to know how Knight's parents and siblings dealt with his disappearance. We will never know because his family was not forthcoming, nor was Wright's "lady friend," a lady a couple years his senior who attended the same high school and asked permission to visit him in the jail so she could proselytize her Christian beliefs. Knight apparently let her visit and maintained contact after his incarceration because she was a person who wanted nothing from him, or at least nothing he was unwilling to give. One would think after so many people refusing to talk that the author would realize he was being shut out and leave them the hell alone. Instead, he flies to Maine, stops to buy lilacs and an apple pie for Knight's mother, a woman he has never met, and proceeds uninvited to the Knight home.



I am not so surprised as some reviewers that the family did not report Knight's vanishing to the police. This was a private family and people can be strange. I know this firsthand from working many years in a profession interacting with strange people who sometimes behaved in bizarre ways. Once you've interviewed thousands of unusual people, you realize the odd behavior of some humans, such as Knight's family, does not have to make sense.



I recommend the book as a mildly interesting plane or beach read. If you're looking for any deep insights into why people choose the hermit life, I'd look elsewhere.