The Hermit's Story

I'm not even done with it yet but the stories I've read thus far have all been outstanding. I love this author's style and sensibility

all the stories in this selection are well-written and entertaining. the title story is beautiful. i don't like all that Rick Bass has written, but this Bass at his best.

Rick bass is an amazing writer. At first you think he is just a nature writer, and his nature descriptions in this book are amazing, but this collection of stories harkens back to his beginnings with the short story collection "THE WATCH". The characters in those stories were just beginning to find out what was important in life and love. The characters in these stories have put in the years in work and relationships and have pared their existence down to a sparse measure of what is important to them. In my favorite story "the Fireman" you hear about a marriage pushed to the edge and brought back stronger for the struggle. Kirby & Mary Ann are older versions of Kirby and Trish from "THE WATCH". "The swans" talks of Billy & Amy a couple who have dug in so to speak in the Yaak valley and created a life which while isolating satisfies all their needs of their love for each other. Only toward the end does Billy acknowledge the friendships around him. If you have ever been young and starting out in a tough spot and wished you could look 20 years into the future and see if you survived this the book. Rick Bass characters not only survive they thrive in a way i have never heard relationships described. One can only wait another 20 years to see where the characters end up.

Rick Bass is a phenomenal nature writer, and though I have not yet read all of his books, The Hermit's Story is my favorite out of the others I have read. Rick Bass writes about simple life, and the influence of the wilds on people who still live with the land, instead of just on it. In The Hermit's Story, Bass reveals another ten stories that cut straight to the heart, and bring the reader into a new world, one where people love and care for the land they live on, and where the outside world of today's developed society is strange and unforgiving. As an avid reader of nature writing, and an outdoors lover, I am enticed by Bass's writing, and it inspires me to write, and to spend time in the wild. I could not ask for more out of a book.

Whether he's writing about the changing seasons in Yaak Valley, Montana (WINTER) or his bird dog (COLTER), Rick Bass is one of my favorite nature writers. In this collection of ten fictional pieces, we find his characters crossing a frozen lake beneath the ice ("The Hermit's Story"), feeding fresh bread, "crumb by crumb," to beautiful, big swans ("Swans"), escaping the workaday world on a Texas fishing trip ("The Prisoners"), rescuing a marriage by fighting fires--"As long as the city keeps burning, they can avoid becoming weary and numb"(p. 51)--("The Fireman), making love in the "total blackness" of a cave ("The Cave"), living life "a hundred miles round trip" from "a real town" ("Real Town"), pigging out on pancakes, grits, ham, fried eggs, ribs, bacon, biscuits and gravy in a North Carolina diner ("Eating"), and rescuing a deer that fell through ice ("Two Deer"). All the while, Bass approaches his subjects with his characteristic childlike sense of wonder, and with a true respect for wilderness.G. Merritt