The Stranger in the Woods: An Unforgettable Tale of a Reclusive Hermit's Life

Tracy N: Great read!
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Canada on Sep 24, 2023

Linda M.: Thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Not a big book to read, never the less intriguing story Of a mans choice to withdraw from society and live a solitary life.

Australia on Apr 05, 2023

Mr Stephen Catterall: This book is easy and straightforward to read and contains a compelling, fascinating story. I myself share a number of traits with the 'hermit' and the author. I love nature and solitude. I have camped by myself for a few days at a time. The thought of camping for 27 years... it's impossible to comprehend. The idea is something that both attracts me and fills me with fear. It's easy to imagine doing what this hermit has done when you're reading this book somewhere warm and cosy. In truth, there's no way I could replicate their feat.

I have no reason to doubt the facts as related in this book. It's unfortunate that people desire to label this guy as either someone to admire or someone to disregard as a thief. People are complex. I admire the hermit in his ability to survive at his camp for so long, but there's no denying that at the same time he committed many crimes and in doing so created much fear in the local community. He has been labelled 'crazy' but I think he is just 'different'. He didn't appear to suffer any specific 'trauma' during his childhood that might have spurred his actions. I would speculate that there was a slow build up of tension between the hermit and...

United Kingdom on Dec 08, 2022

Aristos C.: Narrativa cativante sobre um rapaz de 20 anos que saiu para viver escondido em uma floresta e só foi descoberto 27 anos depois. O autor fez um brilhante trabalho jornalístico sobre essa história real, demonstrando muita empatia pelo personagem. O livro é muito bem escrito. Não se limita à narração de tudo que aconteceu nesse período de reclusão e após a descoberta do eremita, mas faz também um levantamento sobre o fenômeno da vida isolada da sociedade em várias culturas e épocas históricas, a partir da opinião de diversos autores.

Brazil on Aug 15, 2018

Mountain Buddha: …[L]ocals were enraged by Knight’s actions. The actual items he stole might be minor, but he also took people’s peace of mind. Their sense of security. Some said they were afraid to sleep in their own cabins, afraid for decades.

‘I felt violated, over and over again,’ said Debbie Baker, who has owned a place on North Pond with her husband for more than twenty years. ‘I lost count how many times he broke in.’ Her two sons, when they were young, were terrified of the Hermit. They had nightmares about him.

So frequently, in our modernized and “progressive” society, we romanticize the escape into the wild; and while it’s true that people have been retreating to nature for its restorative powers since the beginning of time—Jesus, Buddha, Gilgamesh, St. Anthony—it was really the literature of the Romantic period—Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge – that began to codify the retreat into Nature as a literary, as well as a physical, aesthetic. Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”, and Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, who found the French Alps “sublime and magnificent”, and whose “scenes afforded [him] the greatest consolation that [he] was capable of...

United States on Apr 06, 2018

Gabriele: This book is very nice and the story is peculiar. It's an easy read and you will indeed find difficoult to stop and not keep reading.

Italy on Dec 09, 2017

Fritz R. Ward: I wanted to read this book. I had to read it. A man, living alone in Maine, surviving by a combination of theft, his wits, and a strong understanding of the natural world around him...who wouldn't want to read this book. And Michael Finkel tells a very good story. From a technical standpoint, he is at the top of his craft as a writer. We learn how Christopher Knight came to reject civilization, what the effects of isolation from human contact are, and the corresponding spiritual insights they can bring.

And yet, the more I read of this book, the less I liked the author who seemed to be prying the story of Christopher Knight out of his subject, apparently against the wishes of his family, and certainly by the end of the book against the wishes of Knight himself who repeatedly asked him to leave him alone. But I find I can't blame the author, Finkel, for writing this book. Writing is what he does, and he went to extraordinary lengths to do so accurately and fairly. But ironically, for all his concern about Knight's well being, especially as he tried to reintegrate into society, his book denied Knight of the anonymity he craved most. But then again, I realized, Knight would...

United States on Apr 29, 2017