A Book of Silence

Sara Maitland's “Silence” is a solitude, experienced in a wide open nature exempt of the sound of humanity. She spends 1-2 decades exploring and searching for the perfect space, and the perfect silence. The book recounts her explorations (in deserts, and moors, on walks and lock-ins), the practical and the psychological, and mixes it with quotes and stories about other famous hermits and solitude-seekers.

She learns that there are 2 different ways of seeking solitude/silence: the romantic and the religious way. While the religious seekers attempt inner emptiness, a purging of the self, the romantic seekers attempt to find and strengthen their own self while in solitude. A writer in profession and also deeply religious, Maitland wants to find a way to combine these two opposing usages of silence.

Reading this book made me very aware of the city noises around me, and made me long to own a little cottage far from civilisation.