The Kindness of Strangers

On the souls of others, the narcissism of too much solitude, and the opposite of "Eat, Pray, Love" in Carys Davies' second novella.

The Mission House, Carys Davies (2020)

Perhaps because reading is itself a solitary act, there’s a long history of isolation in literature. Fernando Pessoa tells us that “literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life”¹, and the reverse holds true as well: ignoring life is one way to read many more books. Schopenhauer, that philosophical misery-guts, believed a man “can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”² Jane Eyre, meanwhile, believes, “The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

In Carys Davies’ novel The Mission House, Hilary Byrd seeks out solitude in India not for self-respect but for reasons of self-indulgence. Retreating here is his way of avoiding the world. The fifty-one-year-old has left England behind, along with the sister who’s been his lifelong carer, the library job he once loved but came to …