“The Hermit” is actually two funny, light-hearted stories.  The first is about a 70-year old hermit well on his way to finding enlightenment on the “High Plane of Astral Everythingness”.  The other is about the daughter of the mayor of the new village that pops up at the foot of the hermit’s mountain.  The daughter’s behaviour with the young men of the village is, ahem, something of a scandal, which causes the villagers to talk. This causes concern for the chairman of the the political party that the mayor belongs to because it could, of course, sink the mayor’s future career. The two stories eventually converge after a wacky, rambling journey.

The story reads like a ribald tall tale or extended naughty joke told by the village storyteller over a pint.  “Did you hear the one about the Mayor’s Daughter?”  None of the characters have names, by the way.  They’re all just titles – the hermit, the mayor, the mayor’s daughter, the chairman. This just adds to the general silliness and mayhem.  The narrator is really the main character.  There is dialog, most of it pretty slapstick, but the narrator does most of the talking.  Fortunately, the narrator is quite funny, in a jovial, winking, naughty kind of way.  The prose is peppered with phrases like, “young fella”, “by golly”, and “somesuch”.  The dialog never gets coarser than “go to heck, poopie-pants”, “holy smoke”, “daggone it”, or “bouncy-bouncy”.  It’s been a long time since I read a story that used “cavorting” and “atwitter”.  At first I was hearing John Cleese as the narrator but I think British would be wrong.  Maybe Albert Finney in “Big Fish” would be better.  The yarn gets more outrageous with each exaggerated report of the daughter’s behaviour, and each new plan the political party hatches to “spin” the news stories. 

Grammar isn’t my strong point but I’m pretty sure there were some grammar and punctuation problems in the writing.  I know there were some spelling mistakes that should have been caught by a good spellchecker.  However, I spent most of my time chuckling over the wackiness of the plots and the variety of words the author used.  Some of them haven’t been seen in modern fiction in decades and I think it’s great to see them in use again.

All in all, “The Hermit” is a truly funny, silly, rambling story to be read with a pint of beer or cider and a relaxed, open mind. Pull up a chair, set a spell, and let the old village storyteller tell you a tall tale.

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Ray Holland’s The Hermit is a spare, absurd novel. And I love it. There are few pretensions to literary merit here—which makes it all the more meritorious. The whole book is written in a dry, conversational tone, and the wit comes on nonstop once you read the first page. Wisecracks run right alongside sometimes poignant—and sometimes not so poignant—observations on society and how it attempts to shape us, but one never gets in the way of the other.

Indeed, it is Holland’s humor that make this story so thought-provoking. A serious work examining sex, politics and public relations would be steamy, full of intrigue, and utterly boring. Over-done. With The Hermit, however, the story latches on and does not let go until your sides ache from chortling and you actually are thinking about the message. This novel is a demonstration of how books like Narnia or the Lord of the Rings touch people so deeply, without ever devolving into overly complicated plots or overtly flowering prose.

Not to say that Holland comes close to those titans, however. At times the narrator’s voice breaks from the usual wry tone, jarring the reader, or else strives too hard. The morals of the story sometimes are hammered onto the reader rather than deftly ingratiated, but that is one of the pitfalls of such a starkly written novel; it is sometimes hard to get ideas across without being obvious. But The Hermit is similarly broad in its characters, gladly embracing archetypes, and Holland’s style is simple. Simple, but effective.

In short, The Hermit is a great read. Quick, pleasant, and funny.

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