Raising Hare

Raising Hare is the kind of book that I simply can't resist. It's the perfect intersection of nature and human experience, written in a gentle, thoughtful style by Chloe Dalton, who has mostly worked in politics and foreign affairs, focused on big international events. All that changed during lockdown when she lived in the country, in an isolated barn conversion, and unwittingly rescued a leveret (baby hare) and took it into her home. Against all odds, the hare grew and thrived, drawing Dalton into a hitherto unseen world of predators and prey, hedges and fields. Keeping her doors open so that the hare could come and go, tiptoeing around the sleeping animal, making sure that guests keep their noise down not to scare it, Dalton shapes her life around the hare, and is rewarded with her trust, to the point where the hare gives birth and raises a pair of leverets inside the home.

Dalton admits that before her relationship with the hare, she paid little attention to the natural world. The hare opens her eyes to the rhythms of the seasons, the activities of the birds and animals, the effect of intensive farming practices on the loss of wild spaces like hedges and woods. Raising Hare is not a long book, but it's a beautiful and profound reading experience based on close observation of small and undramatic events, like James Rebanks' The Place of Tides.