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A Simplified Life: A Contemporary Hermit's Experience of Solitude and Silence
Today, as increasing numbers of people try to make sense of their lives in the face of unexpected or unlooked for change, this direct and compelling memoir by someone who has voluntarily embraced a life of radical simplicity and solitude is a real message for our times. What makes a young, Cambridge educated woman first join a religious order and then, if that were not demanding enough, seek a hermit vocation, literally on the edge of the world with only a simple hut as protection against Atlantic winds and storms? Here the author tells her story. For more than forty years Sr Verena lived a solitary life at the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula, looking out across the sea to Bardsey, Wales' island of saints, and has only recently - with increasing age - moved nearer human habitation in the parish where R S Thomas was priest. For her, this narrow straitened place became a mirror of the whole of creation and the material poverty of her life became a means to 'having nothing yet possessing all things' in the words of St Paul. Over the decades, countless people have beaten a path to her door seeking spiritual counsel and direction for their own busy lives and her account speaks directly to those who may be facing an enforced simplicity leading them into something profoundly positive and life giving.
160 pages, Paperback
First published July 30, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 11, 2013
I was quite delighted to discover this book - the story of an Angican nun turned hermit. I was curious to read an account of modern hermit life, in a society where hermits are generally seen as a thing of the past. How difficult would it be to adapt? How would a person change over the years? How would a person's faith grow and develop? What sort of things would a person miss?
However, the book really didn't answer these questions. Well, there was a bit about how she was scared of snakes, even knowing they were harmless, and a bit about how she was scared when there was a big storm, and a bit about how she was depressed for a whole year, but it was all rather detached and fragmented. There was a lot about the monks and hermits of the past, and the history of the particular Welsh island where she was staying. The book is supposed to have three strands running though it - she reminds us of this in the epilogue:
Three journeys have been woven together in the pages of this narrative, 'three stories: the story of a place, a personal journaey lived out within that place, and the universal journey shared by all men and women - our human condition' - of which each personal journey is a part.
But to be honest, reading that sentence made me think 'Oh, was that what it was supposed to be?' It really wasn't obvious to me - it seemed incredibly rambling. And badly written. I'm not normally one to criticise something for being badly written - when people criticise the writing of a book, I find they generally mean it's written in an informal style, not sticking to all the grammar rules, but normally such books are quite readable, and I have no particular issue with them using an informal style. But this book is something quite different. The style is more formal, quite awkward, not very readable at all, but also with odd sentence structures that made me do a second take, and realise that, yes, this sentence is actually grammatically wrong or ambiguous. And there are paragraphs that go on for pages - something that I'm willing to forgive in Henry James, but this book has none of James' redeeming qualities!
To give an example, the author is talking about the desert hermits and the first Welsh Celtic hermits and how they all have the same inner quest of working through their tensions and temptations. She says:
The culture and ambience was very different but essentially the quest was the same. This rings as true to me now in the twenty-first century as it did then.
I actually made a little Kindle note at this point - it says 'WTF?' Because seriously, this makes no sense. What rings true - the fact that the quest was the same, or the quest itself? And when is 'then' - the time of the original desert hermits, or the later time of the mediaeval Welsh hermits? Or just a generalised 'in the past, long ago'. And regardless, how could this quest have rung true to her in the times of medieval monasticism? She wasn't there! Surely she means 'as it did then to those Celtic hermits and the desert hermits before them.' But even then, how on earth can she know what rang true to them, and whether her experience is the same as theirs? The sentence makes no sense!
In reality, I suspect the book wasn't edited very thoroughly - it was probably just seen as one of those 'book written by a weirdo - leave it as it is' type things (that certainly seems to be the case for some books written by autistic authors - as if editing would somehow spoil the pure 'other-ness' of the author, rather than actually make things clearer and more readable for the reader, and thus get more readers and wider understanding of this 'other-ness').
Anyway, I'm not sure if it's because of the writing style, or because of the rambling lack of structure, or just because it doesn't occur to the author to somehow engage the reader and make things relateable in some way, but the stuff about the history of the monks and hermits, which I think could be potentially very interesting, comes across as disjointed and dry. And the stuff about the author herself - the stuff I was most interested in - was sparse and detached and mostly non-existent. I came away from the book with very little sense of what her life was like as a hermit. She was scared of snakes and thunderstorms, and it was cold. And she was depressed for a year and then it got better. But there are no details, nothing to relate to. It's all very distant and impersonal. We are not given any sense of her life before she became a hermit, or indeed before she became a nun (other than that she was educated at Cambridge and seemed to have quite a privileged upbringing). And nothing at all about her faith - her spiritual journey, her experience of God. Her reactions to wild landscapes, yes, but nothing beyond that. I wonder if that is an upper middle class high Anglican thing - I'm just thinking of certain Anglicans who declare with pride that, unlike evangelical Christians, they don't talk about their relationship with God (the implication being that talking about such things is rather unseemly - like talking about one's bowel movements!).
In all, I'm left wondering what the point of the book was, other than 'Guess what - I was a hermit in Wales and there is a rich tradition of people who were hermits in the past, and gosh, Wales is very windy and cold!' I'm being a bit facetious here, and maybe I'm missing something, but honestly, that is pretty much what I got from the book. I suspect the author is a very interesting, deep-thinking person, and if I had the opportunity to meet her, I would. I'd love to ask her about her experiences. But somehow I don't think her hermit life is conveyed very well in this book. She is probably not really a writer, which is fair enough. And maybe after all, being a hermit sort of dispenses of words in a person's mind anyway, so attempts to use them again will be clumsy and awkward.
I didn't hate the book, but I can't say I really liked it. The two-star 'it was okay' fits here.
However, the book really didn't answer these questions. Well, there was a bit about how she was scared of snakes, even knowing they were harmless, and a bit about how she was scared when there was a big storm, and a bit about how she was depressed for a whole year, but it was all rather detached and fragmented. There was a lot about the monks and hermits of the past, and the history of the particular Welsh island where she was staying. The book is supposed to have three strands running though it - she reminds us of this in the epilogue:
Three journeys have been woven together in the pages of this narrative, 'three stories: the story of a place, a personal journaey lived out within that place, and the universal journey shared by all men and women - our human condition' - of which each personal journey is a part.
But to be honest, reading that sentence made me think 'Oh, was that what it was supposed to be?' It really wasn't obvious to me - it seemed incredibly rambling. And badly written. I'm not normally one to criticise something for being badly written - when people criticise the writing of a book, I find they generally mean it's written in an informal style, not sticking to all the grammar rules, but normally such books are quite readable, and I have no particular issue with them using an informal style. But this book is something quite different. The style is more formal, quite awkward, not very readable at all, but also with odd sentence structures that made me do a second take, and realise that, yes, this sentence is actually grammatically wrong or ambiguous. And there are paragraphs that go on for pages - something that I'm willing to forgive in Henry James, but this book has none of James' redeeming qualities!
To give an example, the author is talking about the desert hermits and the first Welsh Celtic hermits and how they all have the same inner quest of working through their tensions and temptations. She says:
The culture and ambience was very different but essentially the quest was the same. This rings as true to me now in the twenty-first century as it did then.
I actually made a little Kindle note at this point - it says 'WTF?' Because seriously, this makes no sense. What rings true - the fact that the quest was the same, or the quest itself? And when is 'then' - the time of the original desert hermits, or the later time of the mediaeval Welsh hermits? Or just a generalised 'in the past, long ago'. And regardless, how could this quest have rung true to her in the times of medieval monasticism? She wasn't there! Surely she means 'as it did then to those Celtic hermits and the desert hermits before them.' But even then, how on earth can she know what rang true to them, and whether her experience is the same as theirs? The sentence makes no sense!
In reality, I suspect the book wasn't edited very thoroughly - it was probably just seen as one of those 'book written by a weirdo - leave it as it is' type things (that certainly seems to be the case for some books written by autistic authors - as if editing would somehow spoil the pure 'other-ness' of the author, rather than actually make things clearer and more readable for the reader, and thus get more readers and wider understanding of this 'other-ness').
Anyway, I'm not sure if it's because of the writing style, or because of the rambling lack of structure, or just because it doesn't occur to the author to somehow engage the reader and make things relateable in some way, but the stuff about the history of the monks and hermits, which I think could be potentially very interesting, comes across as disjointed and dry. And the stuff about the author herself - the stuff I was most interested in - was sparse and detached and mostly non-existent. I came away from the book with very little sense of what her life was like as a hermit. She was scared of snakes and thunderstorms, and it was cold. And she was depressed for a year and then it got better. But there are no details, nothing to relate to. It's all very distant and impersonal. We are not given any sense of her life before she became a hermit, or indeed before she became a nun (other than that she was educated at Cambridge and seemed to have quite a privileged upbringing). And nothing at all about her faith - her spiritual journey, her experience of God. Her reactions to wild landscapes, yes, but nothing beyond that. I wonder if that is an upper middle class high Anglican thing - I'm just thinking of certain Anglicans who declare with pride that, unlike evangelical Christians, they don't talk about their relationship with God (the implication being that talking about such things is rather unseemly - like talking about one's bowel movements!).
In all, I'm left wondering what the point of the book was, other than 'Guess what - I was a hermit in Wales and there is a rich tradition of people who were hermits in the past, and gosh, Wales is very windy and cold!' I'm being a bit facetious here, and maybe I'm missing something, but honestly, that is pretty much what I got from the book. I suspect the author is a very interesting, deep-thinking person, and if I had the opportunity to meet her, I would. I'd love to ask her about her experiences. But somehow I don't think her hermit life is conveyed very well in this book. She is probably not really a writer, which is fair enough. And maybe after all, being a hermit sort of dispenses of words in a person's mind anyway, so attempts to use them again will be clumsy and awkward.
I didn't hate the book, but I can't say I really liked it. The two-star 'it was okay' fits here.
November 21, 2019
An excellent book written by a sister of the (Anglican) Community of the Holy Name who spent 25 years as a hermit on the edge of the Llyn Peninsular in northwest Wales overlooking Bardsey Island, home to so many saints. She writes with the eye of someone who is practised at looking past the outer into the heart of the world around her and her style transported me to see with her into the world she inhabited. I was only sorry that she didn't delve a little deeper and reveal more of her encounter with God - although that permeates the whole book.
June 19, 2018
A nice book by a lovely, intelligent venerable old catholic nun. the writing style is very flowery, which I struggled with at times. she is very knowledgeable about her history of Pen Llyn, and in the places where she did describe her experience, I enjoyed immensely. Too much history for me, but I recognize a good book when I read one. Very recommended, just not higher rating due to my own personal preference.
September 27, 2025
It didn’t really tell me much, not what I expected and was underwhelming - just a few noteworthy descriptions of nature - forgettable
May 23, 2014
The cover photo here is completely misleading - a quiet lake or swamp or something? No - Verena Schiller went to go live in a shack near the churning ocean of the Welsh coast, with a view of a huge rock Island called Bardsey, which has been a place for contemplatives and hermits for hundreds of years. Schiler became a hermit after being an Anglican nun in community for many years. She records her personal experiences and a history of the land she lived on, and of hermits and contemplatives in Britain. She also writes about what it's like to leave her little house when she's too elderly to stay there on her own anymore (she moves to a house in town, but is able to continue to live by herself with neighbors and doctors close by). A lovely, interesting narrative.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews