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A gentle heart-warming read, that tells the true-life tale of a woman who becomes the unexpected care-giver for a newborn European brown hare, known as a Leveret, when she finds it in a vulnerable and seemingly abandoned position in a remote UK region. With infinite tenderness, the author, a former obsessed career woman on home duty due to the Covid pandemic, gradually feels her life expanding — curling around the needs and wonder of living with, and caring for, a wondrously wild creature.
As the relationship between human to hare moves from fear of causing harm to tender and tenuous partnership, the authors enrapture with a creature few people will ever experience so closely becomes apparent. The result is an awe-inspiring read, and one that cannot help but open a readers eyes to the world around us, — the world we are creating through mass agriculture, pesticide use, deforestation and construction — and the devastating impact wrought on the homeland of a multitude of creatures, historically rooted and living their lives, throughout it all.
Despite warnings of the difficulties in tending a wild animal, and mindful of respecting the hare’s undomesticated nature (unlike its much better known cousin — the rabbit) the author’s journey is inspiring — an intricate balance of kindness and nurture, always from arms-length, and the sing-song of love and gradually releasing dependence that follows, as the hare ultimately grows and matures.
Without giving too much detail away, this is a beautiful story without the heartbreak ending such stories often include. For this reader, (unable to tolerate animal cruelty in any form) the story reached all the right places (both heart and mind), with only a handful of pages, easily identified in advance, detailing the horrors of hare hunting practices that needed to be skipped.
Highly recommended, this quietly majestic little book may be just what a reader needs — a reminder of our crumbly footing, not on top of, but inside and connected to, a wider world— with all our sister creatures, around us.
A great big thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts provided are my own.
