SOURCE: Solomon, Chris. “Hermit's Story Goes Underground to Reveal the Light.” Seattle Times (5 July 2002): H41.

In the following review, Solomon lauds The Hermit's Story for its use of natural landscape settings as integral components to the stories.

You might say that Rick Bass' sense of direction is all turned around. In the general cosmology, “up” is the direction with good connotations. There's heaven, the warm sun, mountaintop enlightenment. Underground? That's home to Hades. The dirt nap.

Yet frequently in the stories of Bass, a former petroleum geologist whose 17 books include the memoir Oil Notes, much wonder lies just beneath the Earth's skin. Going underground means probing something more elemental, a literary wildcatting in which characters—and Bass—tap into the essence of things. “Landscape—geology—is all there is,” the author has said. “I can write (different) stories, but if landscape's not a character, I'm not much interested...