Raising Hare

Over the years, there have been some classic autobiographical books that have celebrated the human connection with the natural world - in particular with different animals. Classics that spring to mind include : Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell; H for Hawk for Helen Mac Donald anreven My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell.

Raising Hare deserves to join this illustrious group. Chloe Dalton has written a highly engaging and beautiful memoir/chronicle about her experiences of rescuing a baby hare /leveret and the ensuing years of their connection.

Abandoned by its mother on a footpath during Covid lockdown Chloe discovers this tiny creature - a new born hare- should she leave it or try to save it from an imminent death?

Decision made, the leveret is taken home but with constant understanding that this is a wild creature not to be domesticated; what follows is the moving story of Chloe's quest to help the hare, enable it to return to the wild and the incredible and mysterious connection that develops between the two of them. The Hare continues to live close to the house and take refuge in a most unexpected way.

Chloe Dalton shines a life on this enigmatic and rarely seen animal and uncovers through her observations the habits and wonderful qualities of Hare as it grows older and its offspring. The story also echoes the seasonal changes and its impact on wildlife as well as exploring the human impact of mass agriculture upon the natural world.

Told over three years, Raising Hare is a truly moving and wonderful read. This is a story about a unique bond -written with warmth - not sentimental- and compassion for an animal that is in decline as it has no legal protection. It also shows how the human /natural environment connection and just slowing down gives an improved quality of life and sense of being.

Maybe Chloe Dalton's book could change perception and highlight the need to save this beautiful creature.

Wildlife read of 2024... superb

The premise of this book is really simple. Chloe, mainly a city girl who travels widely, is confined by lockdown at her barn conversion in a rural location. She hears a dog barking and a man shouting and goes out to see what is happening. Nothing is to be seen so she heads out for a walk along a narrow country lane. She finds a tiny creature on that track and the word "leveret" comes to her mind. She examines it without touching and wonders what to do. She realises that touching it or moving it may well prevent the mother from finding it or caring for it and so she walks on. Four hours later she comes back and finds the leveret still there. After considerable debate she decides taking it home is really the only option. Contacting a local conservationist for advice she realises she has made an error of judgement and that hares do not survive in captivity and that its mother would now ignore it.

However she feels she cannot now do nothing so she tries to find out how she might look after it. It weighs less than an apple. Her sister (a farmer) suggests that she might try a milk substitute without lactose and drops some off for her. So begins a remarkable story. The book follows her experience of trying to look after the leveret. While there is a little more information about what happened in the book blurb I personally feel that coming to this book with relatively little information makes for a richer experience for the reader.

Because of that my comments about this book will be rather more general in nature. To me it is a book that looks at two journeys. One is the hare's progress and, in many ways, it simply lives its life. For me the author's journey is at least as interesting. This is someone who has become a city person - her usual habitat is far from that of a hare. And yet she starts to adjust to the hare. As she becomes far closer to the land and wildlife around her she finds a deeper harmony with the energies of the earth. She also realises that she is very fortunate to be able to observe all that she does. I have found this rare and it makes for a rare book in my mind.

I think this book is fascinating simply from a naturalist's perspective. Chloe becomes a very good observer. She is also a very good writer. This means that we get some wonderful descriptions of wildlife and the rural environment generally as well as superb detail on hares. She is an accomplished researcher and is determined to try and find out more about hares. The information that she finds and sometime uses is very varied. For example looking at a 250 year old poem about hares gives her some useful clues about possible diets (and some of the items were very acceptable to the hare!). In general though there is so little information about hares even in the wild and, based on Chloe's observations, some of the information out there seems unlikely at best.

Ultimately this is one of the best books I have read in many years. There is a simplicity here which appeals. I also found it a very tranquil read (though not all the time!). It is powerful, beautiful and will speak deeply to some of us. I'm grateful to Chloe for this book.

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.

I thought this would be a nice light little filler book and I was floored by how much I loved it! The author found a leveret that appeared to have no mother and hand fed it. She's careful to not treat it like a pet. Over the years the hare begins to trust her and frequently comes back to her home. It's a really touching and lovely read and I sped through it.

Utterly enchanting. This book tells the story of trust and understanding between a human and a wild creature. The wild creature is a hare who puts her need for help, when a leveret, into the hands of a human, and the most amazing bond is formed.
I was simply spellbound by this story. Each appear to lay aside the ‘norms’ of their individual ways of living and begin to share their lives in a most unique way.
I read into the early hours, as the story is intoxicating and I didn’t want to leave the incredibly gentle world, created by two species who aren’t supposed to share their space. This story is beautiful, captivating and completely melted my heart. I would say, thank you to the author, for sharing your story with us. This is definitely well worth reading.

This is a beautifully written book which held me captive. I have no intention of going into the rights and wrongs of helping wild animals, but just want to praise the thoughtfulness of this story. Both Chloe and the leveret seem to learn from each other in a series of trial and error happenings. The writing is lovely, calm and without fuss. I felt better for reading the book. Thank you for the chance to read and review Raising Hare.

I loved this book. Chloe Dalton has written a wonderful story about saving a tiny leveret and how they fitted into each others lives. I enjoyed the writing style and found the whole book evocotive and quite moving. What a wonderful experience - thank you for sharing it. And thanks for the e-ARC to read and review.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this wonderful book. I have not even finished this book and I feel that I have to give my feedback now !
Oh wow, what a panacea for slowing down the frantic pace we are all surviving at and just taking the time to look around us. I just loved this book, it is written as if you are in the room with Hare, so beautifully descriptive.
I already have ordered the hardback when it becomes available, I cannot recommend it highly enough.