There have been some classic books that have celebrated the human connection with animals. Ring of Bright Water, H for Hawk and My Family and Other Animals to name a few. Raising Hare deserves to join this impressive group.
Chloe Dalton has written a highly engaging and beautifully written chronicle about her experience of rescuing a leveret (a baby hare) and the ensuing years of their connection. This is a lovely tribute to the natural world that we share with animals. The setting is Dalton’s home, a restored stone barn situated somewhere in the northern English countryside. During the pandemic Dalton retreated here from London, a welcome relief from her high-powered work as a political adviser and speech writer.
Dalton finds the abandoned leveret lying on a country path near her home. Dalton is unsure about whether to rescue the hare. She does but she places certain restrictions on their relationship: she does not name the animal, tries not to touch it, and does not cage it. Over the three years of the memoir, they develop a remarkable relationship with its own language – one of gestures, dances and breathing (hares emit soft, puff-like sounds).
Dalton educates herself about hares. The books she reads say much about hunting and cooking hares, but little else. Then she finds an 18th-century poem by William Cowper that cites the food that ‘little one’ comes to devour: oats. Those oats – and pears – help the hare quickly to grow to its full size, a lean and lively ‘miniature bucking bronco’ that, when not ‘unmoving as a sphinx’, loves to dance about the house.
Dalton has a zoologist’s eye for detail and a writer’s knack with language. Raising Hare takes a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature and folklore. We learn a great deal about these wonderful creatures. For instance their fur changes colour based on the season to provide camouflage; female hares can have overlapping pregnancies; for their size they’re faster than cheetahs and they smell like digestive biscuits. The book is also very beautifully illustrated.
Raising Hare is a moving and wonderful read. This is a story about a unique bond, written with warmth and compassion for an animal that is in decline. Dalton’s life is transformed through her unexpected connection with the leveret. Dalton is changed, calmed by an endearing creature that, as she writes, “challenged my priorities and woke up my senses”.
The book sheds light on our relationship with our non-human neighbours, bringing into question our assumptions about nature and our place in it. It also shows how the human/natural environment connection and just slowing down give an improved quality of life and sense of being. Highly recommended.
Cathryn Ferguson
The review for the August edition of the Voice will be The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley.
Read along with us and see if you agree with our review next month.
