By Julie F.

Chloe Dalton, the author of Raising Hare: A Memoir, is a writer, political adviser, and foreign policy specialist who decided to escape London during the pandemic. In February 2021, while still getting used to the lay of the land and the run-down home she purchased in the dead winter landscape, she discovers a leveret (a baby hare) in her garden. Not knowing anything about the species, but determining that the mother is not close and may not return, she brings it in and sets about trying to keep it alive.

There is a lovely, intimate prologue from the perspective of the mother hare that offers one explanation for how the leveret, which she has carefully hidden from predators, might have come to be separated from her. Dalton is clearly the kind of person who listens to the landscape and tries to discern what it wants to communicate. She tries very hard to ensure that the leveret stays wild. She bottle-feeds it and then offers it porridge oats, but then she plans to release it into the wild. Although the leveret ventures into her garden, and then eventually over the garden wall, it never becomes fully wild (nor fully tame), and it returns again and again–delivering the next litters of baby leverets in the garden, and even later in the house, where she feels safe and they grow up feeling even safer, having been born on the floorboards.

The memoir is a lovely meditation on what is tame and what is wild, the tenuous but loving connection between humanity and nature, and how slow, deliberate observation can teach us so much about a species. Dalton knew next to nothing about hares when she began and is surprised to learn that there’s not that much information out there; most of what she learns is gleaned from the poet William Cowper, whose period of depression in 1774 was relieved when he was gifted a three-month-old hare and later acquired two more, all of whom he adored. She says, “I doubt that Cowper imagined his poems might be used as a guide to raising a leveret nearly 250 years later, but his words were in many ways the most useful of any I found” (53). This is particularly true in relation to feeding and shelter; though Cowper kept his leverets in pens at night, she didn’t keep the leveret locked in, “never want[ing] it to feel trapped inside, nor barred from coming in” (53).

This is a tour-de-force–beautifully written, resonant, humorous, and charming at times, but full of emotional and philosophical heft. I can’t say enough good things about it, and it’s such an accomplished first book from a thoughtful, skilled, and talented author. If you enjoy audio, the narration by Louise Brealey is also accomplished and is a beautiful accompaniment to the text (if you like to listen as you read along as I did). The illustrations by Dublin-based artist Denise Nestor are also full of wonder and beauty. Near the end of the book, she talks about the impact of the hare on her life, and her description is a wonderful summation of the emotions you feel while reading her story. I’ll conclude with her words, because my own are inadequate in comparison:

“She has taught me patience. And as someone who has made their living through words, she has made me consider the dignity and persuasiveness of silence. She showed me a different life, and the richness of it. She made me perceive animals in a new light, in relation to her and to each other. She 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. The sensation of wonder she ignited in me continues to burn, showing me that aspects of my life I thought were set in stone are in fact as malleable as wax, and may be shaped or reshaped. She did not change, I did. I have not tamed the hare, but in many ways the hare has stilled me” (275).

Raising Hare: A Memoir is available in print and as an e-book and e-audiobook from Libby.

Julie is an instructor and research specialist at HCLS Miller Branch who finds her work as co-editor of Chapter Chats very rewarding. She loves gardening, birds, crime and espionage fiction, all kinds of music, and the great outdoors.