The Hermitage

The Hermitage is a work etched on the timbrous membrane between soul and world, memory and perception. The result is disquieting music, a kind of dirge for all that’s been lost and may never return. No one alive writes like Quentin S. Crisp.
JF Martel, author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice

This gently, precisely written tale is of an experience of vitality that is, at once, clearly felt and yet out of reach. Crisp raises one of the great questions of our age: How to participate in life beyond the confines of our isolated psyches? It does not provide direct answers; sometimes to know one’s predicament is a first step towards change.
Mark Vernon, author of A Secret History of Christianity

As much a story as an extended meditation on what’s beyond all theological musings and doctrinal disputes — namely the concrete encounter with the sacred, and how such an event will mark and shape the rest of one’s life. The grey spectre of modernity, which so haunts this novella’s protagonist, is revealed to be ephemeral mist when contrasted with the presence of the Mystery, which comes to meet us completely unanticipated, and which once encountered cannot be forgotten. It is a perilous thing to walk out into the marvellous landscape of rural England, for before long you may find yourself trespassing on the holy. Thereafter, entanglement in modern life will be all the more painful.
Sebastian Morello, author of Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries

A story of a mystical adventure, told in Crisp’s characteristically meticulous and evocative prose. It is an absorbing and immersive read in which every detail has its significance. While moving from the remembered past to the present, it goes to the very edge of the unsayable and the silence, then reports back with great originality and candour. A highly recommended experience.
Reggie Oliver, author of Mrs. Midnight

The Hermitage is thought-provoking and beautifully written, a meditation on a partly remembered, perhaps partly imagined place of refuge from the world. Crisp is one of the most beguiling, accomplished, and enjoyable writers of our generation.
R. B. Russell, author of Waiting for the End of the World

A beautiful book that can but enrich the soul of each and every reader. English Nature Mysticism receives through this novel a fresh incarnation — one that twines together the self-conscious, haunting, philosophic introspection of a socially awkward, yet humorous, protagonist awakened to new life in old places. The West Country is apotheosised through an old church, with its resident hermit rooted to its fluctuations in time, proximate to folk inns and lighter shades of folklore. Time itself plays a prominent role in this thought-provoking piece, where modern-day urbanity provides a third layer to reflections of the past, mortality, divinity, and other timeless speculations that orbit such thoughts.

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, author of Philosophy and Psychedelics