There were parts of this book which I really loved. Unfortunately, there were also parts I didn’t.

During lockdown, Chloe was working from home in the countryside and found a leveret seemingly abandoned by her mother. Having left it, hoping for her mother to return, she realised that if she left it then it wouldn’t make it. She took it home, and took advice of feeding it and looking after it, until it was able to roam free. This wasn’t the end of the relationship as the hare spend many days and nights in Chloe’s house including giving birth to several sets of her own leverets.

I really enjoyed reading about the author’s interactions with the hare (she doesn’t give it a name as it is a wild animal), however, it did get bogged down in facts and information about hares generally and other animals, and those parts ruined the book for me.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6779354580

https://maddybooksblog.blogspot.com/2024/08/raising-hare-by-chloe-dalton-there-were.html

This is a delightfully thrilling, informative, and engaging piece of non fiction from Chloe Dalton that is thought provoking and celebrates the profoundly affecting philosophical, emotional, and spiritual possibilities and connections between human beings, the natural world and wildlife. During Covid, urban dweller and frequent traveller, Dalton was no longer able to pursue her exhausting and time consuming career. She retreats to a rural location, living in a barn, working from home, with her sister, a farmer, residing close by. Serendipity has her rescuing an baby leveret in danger, taking it home, to raise it, not naming it, intending it to be free to roam and leave should it want to do so.

However, there is so little information on how and what to feed the nocturnal living leveret, Dalton is largely reduced to learning through trial and error, discovering it does enjoy oats as part of its diet. Her curiosity about her new housemate leads her to delve into man's historical relationship with the hare, responsible for wiping it out in huge numbers, hunting, and eating it. She explores the various species, the mythology, legends and folklore attached to it, its association with 'witches', people simultaneously revering and demonising it, yet there is a little true factual knowledge of the hare itself, other than some documentation where they have been kept caged. Dalton goes into detail with her observations of the leveret, riveted by the physical changes, behaviour, habits, intelligence, and changing needs as it grows. She is nervous and anxious in trying to ensure the hare and its offspring survive a slew of challenges, including the animals and birds that prey on it, humans, and the terrifying pitfalls of our modern life, such as vehicles and large scale modern farming practices.

I was transfixed by the powerful and transformative nature of the relationship on Dalton, altering her thinking, adapting her home, ensuring family and visitors responded to the needs of the hare, her growing awareness of an environment that takes little account of the needs of wildlife and hares. Dalton must move with caution as newly born leverets are born in her home, outlining the palpable, if invisible, trust between her and the incredible hare over the 3 years covered in the book. I imagine there are a wide range of readers who would be keen to know and eager to learn more of the memerising little known hare, I can certainly highly recommend it to everyone! Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Raising Hare - Chloe Dalton for publication 26 Sept 2024

The story of a woman raising a baby leveret found abandoned close by her house is charming informative and delightful. How she goes on through Covid to accomodate the hare and subsequent leverets in her house and garden over 3 years and how she tries to find out how to do this without totally domesticating a wild animal is a pleasure to read.

This tale though is not just about raising the hare but is how the authors eyes are opened to the countryside around her and the damage humans have done and continue to do to the land and animals that live in it through intensive farming. Some of the descriptions, those Chloe researched from the past about how hares were perceived and hunted to the damage farm machinery can do are not pleasant to read but fascinating non the less especially as we appear to know very little about hares.

Having rarely seen a hare in the wild and then only from a distance I really wanted to go and spend time where Chloe lives as she sees an abundance of them which must be a joy. The awakening of her interest in nature through living with "hare" and how she manages her relationships to accomodate "hare" when she has to return to work is a fascinating read.

I loved this.

Reading Raising Hare brought me so much joy! How amazing can it be to have the privilege of observing such an elusive creature in the comfort of your home?! Home absolutely extraordinary for that same creature to allow you to be part of her world, a safe heaven for her babies? The ever fascinating animal world! And yes, indeed, we should do everything in our power to preserve it!

A meditative, warm, reflective and interestingly enough, informative blend of memoir and book on nature.
This is quick but transformative read. It is pure innocence speaking.
The reason why this is not a 5 star read for me is about the prose and the editing at times, and the slight imbalance between the reflective elements and the information in the beginning.
From a purely humane and nature-loving, life-affirming standpoint, this is pure gold.

Just wonderful!! This was a perfect piece of non fiction that showed the innocence and connection of humans with wildlife, and how the impact of just 1 creature can make a huge difference to a person and their outlook on life!

So the new life of Chloe begins when she discovers an abandoned leveret while out walking in the countryside where she has moved to during lockdown. Her life before was flying around the world at the drop of a hat, and she fully expected that was how her life would continue. But this little creature becomes her charge, and finding information about raising leverets proves very difficult! Through trial and error though, and working from home, she finds every moment of her day thinking of the leveret and making its' life a happy one! It also makes her very aware of the plight of hares, and other wildlife, in the modern world and it's fascinating to read all she discovers. As well as this she also mentions the help she found in poetry and literature, as well as folklore.

I loved the interaction between her and the leveret, and the trust the animal had in her from those early days, to the time when it reconnects with the life it should be living in the wild. It makes her look at the way she uses her garden, making it now more attractive to wildlife, and she even ropes in her mum for 'leveret' babysitting when she finds herself called back to work. It was so touching to follow the story as it grows up to have young of its' own!

So not only did her intervention have a beneficial impact on the leveret, it has a longstanding impact on her too with a new approach to life and a stronger understanding and bond with wildlife and outdoors. Glorious!! highly recommended!!

This is a lovely memoir; set over a three year period, about the interactions between the author and a leveret.It contains warmth but it's not sentimental compassion.

Chloe Dalton has written just the right balance of information about hares, including historical fact and their decline throughout the book, ensuring the reader is educationally reflective of the information.

A thoroughly enjoyable read!

Thankyou to Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Hare's are fascinating and mystical creatures and this account of how Dalton came to rear an abandoned leveret was fascinating - wonderful accounts of the lives and behaviours of the species mixed with personal reflections of 'her' hare made Dalton's book and brilliant read - especially her endeavours to keep it as a wild animal and not to tame it as far as possible.

Raising Hare is the story of one woman's determination to save the life of a leveret, and how in doing so, the leveret changed her life for the better.
Chloe Dalton was once a busy woman, in a job that took her to far flung places. Then the Covid19 pandemic arrived and the whole of the UK went into lockdown. Unable to work in her London office, Chloe moved into her barn conversion in the country. It was here, whilst out for a walk, that she met the newly born leveret.
Chloe's account of how she cared for the leveret, how she watched it grow into adulthood, and how it allowed her to be a part of its life is truly heartwarming.
I've lived in rural Ireland for most of my life, and I've only seen a hare on two occasions. Apart from the the superstitions that surround them, I knew nothing about hares or their habitat before I picked up this book.
Raising Hare is probably the most beautiful, moving book I have read this year.
Thanks to Canongate Books and Netgalley for the digital ARC.

'Raising Hare' is one of the most heartwarming, beguiling, hopeful nature book I've read in years. Chloe Dalton has written an utterly fascinating account of how she came to accidentally end up raising a wild leveret in her home. Over the following days and weeks and years, the young hare grew and matured, and had babies itself, and every aspect of its development was an education for Dalton. I am lucky enough to occasionally glimpse hares in the countryside around my home, but I knew next to nothing about them before I read Dalton's book. Now, I feel as though I know so much more about this incredible creature. An animal that defies our attempts to hunt and kill it almost to extinction. 80% of British hares are gone, and their habitat is disappearing too. This story of one woman and her relationship with a wild hare gripped me from the start, and is a powerful call to arms to protect the hare before it's too late.

This novel about how Chloe Dalton finds an abandoned leveret and, against all the odds, manages to keep it alive is simply astonishing. Her honest telling of how much she learns about herself from the process adds a whole extra dimension to an extraordinarily intimate tale. The quiet, yet always observant hare changes Chloe's perspective as to how much more mankind must recognise and respect nature. Like the hare, she doesn't shout her message. Rather it is the gentleness with which she portrays the hare's perspective of our man-made world, that makes any argument against against her tender logic seem strident and abrasive.
Whilst one or two descriptive passages may be just a tad lengthy the overall narrative is beautifully told and ties the reader to the page ever anxious to know what happens next to this utterly beguiling animal. A wonderful read.
A quote to conclude with that I trust conveys both the sensitivity of the hare and the impact she made on the author.
"She did not change, I did. I have not tamed the hare, but in many ways the hare has stilled me"
Let this book still you.

What a lovely book and such a balm for the soul. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy. I have only seen Hare’s twice in my life and they do always seem very elusive. I have learnt more about them reading this book and discovered with the author the joy and worry of raising a hare!

I absolutely loved this book. It was so unexpected. What a treat to spend time with a hare and her family. Reconnecting with nature, opening our eyes to see what exactly is out there. So many things right under our nose that we never even see. Beautifully written and so much historical research. Quite amazing that our ancestors knew so much more about them than we do today. Cosy up and enjoy.

This is a really lovely book!
The sort of book that you want everyone to read!
Thanks for the opportunity to read & review it.

Raising Hare is a biography/memoir that I gave 4 stars, which I read as an ebook. I really enjoyed reading this, a lot more than I thought I would. The book goes into detail about how the author, Chloe, found a baby hare and how since that day her life has essentially changed. I thought that this book was really interesting and informative. As someone who didn't know much about hares before reading this book, I definitely know a lot more information about them now but also a little bit about plants, gardening and farming as well to some degree. Overall, this was a beautiful book about a woman and a hare and how their lives were changed, more so for Chloe. There were so many sweet and heartfelt moments but also some sad parts as well (which I recommend checking the trigger warnings for). Raising Hare is a reflective book about humans and animals and how we interact with each other, the decisions we as humans make and how those then impact the animals and environment around us. I would recommend this book to others if you are looking for a short, quick read and in my opinion very interesting, learning about hares and the relationship between the hare and Chloe. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers Canongate for giving me this ebook in exchange for a review, although all opinions are my own.

Respect without limit for other

Choe Dalton’s account of a life-changing meeting between a seemingly orphaned day old, or at most, a few days old leveret, and herself, is an extraordinary one. It is profound, beautifully written, almost unbearably tender and reflective and has left me with an aching heart – but without individual tragedy as a kind of operatic driver. Rather, it is the precision and depth of the journey Dalton makes, into the fragility of Gaia and her creeping, crawling, burrowing, swimming, flying, leaping, rooting, sprouting and flowering dwellers, all guided and taught by that chance encounter with that new born leveret.

This is the story of a relationship, where the leader, the teacher and the guide – one might almost say the guiding or guarding spirit - is a wild creature. One ineffably other.

I am always drawn to writing about the natural world which does not seek to impose human control, human superiority on that world.

Dalton is a curious writer, in some ways. She reveals little about herself, there is a kind of reserve, a secrecy which is quite delicate. She keeps herself and her personal story out of the frame, other than that to explain how the pandemic and lockdown inevitably took her out of her fairly high profile metropolitan life, into homeworking somewhere closer to her family, in a rural setting, living in a barn she had bought, still in the process of some renovation.

The way in which her own personal circumstances are kept out of centre stage, somehow fits most beautifully into the nature of the hare itself, a creature endowed with many contradictory mythic qualities, regarded both as sacred and as suspect in different times and in different cultures, as both foe of humanity, sport for hunters, and a creature of rare beauty. Much of what is known about hare is contradictory, unproven and wrong. As an ultimate prey animal – from foxes, stoats, and birds of prey, as well as mankind, the hare itself is secretive, wary and adept at hiding.

When confronted with the newborn leveret, Dalton is momentarily conflicted in what to do. If she carefully ‘rescues’ the baby, is this a creature whose mother is hiding nearby, who will rescue her infant once the coast is clear, or has the mother already been eaten, shot, hunted by hounds or killed by a car or agricultural machinery? When she realises that these latter fates are most likely, and does ‘rescue’ the hare, she cannot even find, in any research, how to save it. Curiously, the only guidance she does find is from a eighteenth century poet, William Cowper, who rescued and ‘tamed’ three hares.

Dalton’s choices are very different. She immediately rejects any sense of taming, owning, domesticating the wild creature. She makes decisions to help the leveret to survive, to thrive, and to grow, but never departs from the respect that this is ‘other’ a wild creature. She absolutely loves the hare, that is clear, but refuses even to go so far as to name it, as that also creates some kind of hierarchy of relationship. She determines, from the start, to not cage, not confine and indeed, human adapts her own life to serve where hare sets direction. Hare, in the end, changes her, develops in her a relationship with the natural world

“ I have been reminded that we are creatures as tied to the seasons of nature as the hare, and as affected by its reverses, even if we are unaware of the fact”….” (hare) has taught me patience. And as someone who has made their living through words,..has made me consider the dignity and persuasiveness of silence….made me perceive animals in a new light..made me re-evaluate my life, and the question of what constitutes a good one. I have learnt to savour beautiful experiences while they last – however small and domestic they may be in scope – to find the peace to live in a particular state of feeling, and to try to find a simplicity of self……(hare) did not change. I did. I have not tames the hare, but in many ways the hare has stilled me.”

This is, I think, a deeply spiritual, philosophical book, as well as a hugely informative one. This for sure is a book which I will be recommending – and buying – for friends. I was lucky to be allowed to read it as an ARC.

I read this book while not feeling too good, a friend died, I was ill, the weather depressing and came out feeling so much better. The strength of this book is its truthful simplicity, of trying ones best to help when not really knowing what to do. A beautiful metaphor for life and nature. A hug of a book wrapped up in a comforting blanket.

I was given the chance to read an ARC of this book. It's not my usual style of book but for some reason I wanted to try it! Am I glad I did. I learned so much about hares and the impact humans have on their survival. It's a great book.

This was a great read and I was fully engrossed. There is little to add to this wonderful informative and well written book I felt like I was actually there with the hare and leverets. It made me appreciate on a deeper leverl how it was a priveledge to have been country walking a few months back and counted 9 in one field. The human interference has a lot to account for. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC.

A beaitifully written account of the bond between a human and a wild creature. Instead of a light, heart warming story this was a deeper meditation on how wildness and civilisation overlap and the fact that we can meet the wild in the grey spaces in between. Lovely.