Book Review: "Hermit" by Chris McQueer

It's April 2025 and I have to be honest with you, my back hurts from carrying shopping right now. I'm getting a bit on edge because my Hello Kitty pen is running out of ink and it's my favourite pen so that's upsetting. As you can probably see, there is nothing of worth going on in my life right now and yet, we are back with another review. Hermit tells the story of a young man caught in the web of the incel community after meeting someone online. Dragged into the depths, we see what happens when you don't open your mouth against someone who is trying to influence your actions and opinions. Chris McQueer writes an interesting analysis of what is actually going on in these strange segments of the dark online world.

Jamie has dropped out of school some time ago now and he recounts the day where he told his grandmother that his mother didn't love him. His mother is horrified in her own narrative, which alternates in chapters with Jamie's. It is clear that Jamie has no intention of doing anything with his life though, he sits and plays video games for long hours, talking to strangers online and describing them as friends. Chris McQueer writes Jamie's life not as one that's a tragedy, but one that is almost inevitable. He recounts not only his time with his mother, but also being the weirdo with no friends at school.

I think this is where we can all say that we know or at least, knew someone who was like Jamie. Someone who kept to themselves and didn't have any friends, someone who was constantly by themselves. But on top of this, Jamie does the same thing at home. Keeping himself to himself, he avoids speaking to his mother to the point that she doesn't even notice whether he is there or not.

Fiona is Jamie's mother and we can start this analysis of her character by drawing similarities between her and her son. First of all, Fiona is detached like her son is. She goes to work, comed back from work, eats and goes to bed. A common theme in modern life is having absolutely no time or energy to do anything apart from going to and from work and errands. Most people (like myself) don't even bother going out anymore because there is no remaining energy to do so. Fiona is a symptom of modern times, a representation that employers need to do better to maintain the mental health of their employees.

The book alternates between chapters on Fiona and chapters on Jamie. It shows us the same event from different perspectives and also how the whole book culminates in these two people confronting each other and how they are more similar than they think. But what is even more important here is that before this, Jamie must go through the online process of being pulled into a whole new world by a 'friend' named Lee. Lee claims that a man named Seb can teach the two of them how to be proper incels, giving them initiation tasks etc. The only problem is that Lee and Jamie live in Scotland and Seb is an American in London. The two must take a six-hour or so bus journey. Neither of them tell their mothers.

This obviously leads to a confusion in which Fiona has no idea what her son is doing anyway as simultaneously he gets dragged kicking and screaming into a world he doesn't fully understand, and because of his lack of social skills, he isn't sure he wants to know. As danger increases in London, Fiona learns that her son is missing and all hell breaks loose.

Chris McQueer has created such a great phenomenon here because the writing style is purposefully unremarkable. It isn't atmospheric, it feels bland and static and thus, reflects the lives of the characters in the story. This is probably the best thing about this book for me because the articulation of the narratives becomes representative of the position of the characters in the context of the society they live in. This includes moments in the story such as Jamie going to his grandmother's house, Fiona going to the Tesco and many more mundane activities which have deeper meanings to them.

All in all, I thought that this book was just simply brilliant. It seems like the author has worked really hard in giving us a vision of what it actually looks like to live in this world. A world of hopelessness, a world of loneliness and a world of entrapment. One thing we realise is that this lifestyle may not be entirely a 'choice' after all, but a series of very unfortunate events.