For me this was one of the most surprising books I’ve read in years. Let’s see if I can capture it or at least give a hint of its unique qualities.
Though her career involves writing, this is the author’s first book. She had always been drawn to the city (London), “into the world of politics and foreign policy, working as a political adviser,” as she describes herself. She had bought a barn out in the countryside as a project she could take on; her job was exciting and interesting but impermanence was built in. When the pandemic came our way, she was glad to have a retreat. This is the story of finding a baby hare (called a leveret) and her connection to this wild animal.
A hare is very different from a rabbit; they look different, rabbits have been domesticated unlike hares, and hares are apparently very elusive and not much is known about them. I never heard about hares when I grew up in the country in Virginia, and no one I have spoken to about them has either. When the author took on care of the hare, she struggled to find out what they eat. In fact it was a poet named William Cowper who lived from 1731 to 1800 whose work gave her the most information.
She was careful not to make a pet of the hare, never giving it a name, touching it only as needed. She always imagined it returning to the wild and took whatever actions necessary to enable it to be outside. Nevertheless, a connection formed and as she worked online, the hare sat under her chair and if she was outside and it was cold, it would “push its nose under my coat and work its way around my back.” The hare developed so much trust that when she grew up, though she lived sometimes in the wild, she had one of her litters of leverets in the house. This is hard to imagine but the hare never left any trace inside the house, including after the litter was born.
The author made many accommodations for the hare, but for me the most surprising was that she always left a door open for her (and later her litter) to come and go as they pleased. She never mentions any unwanted intruders coming into the house, but one wonders. Many times she talks about the predators of hares and their leverets; one was “stoats,” a term that is vaguely familiar, but I didn’t know it referred to a weasel. Did they never chase their prey into the house?
I found the author’s descriptions of the hare and the landscape where she lived to be beautiful and calming. She found that the hare’s example made her more conscious of the value and beauty of other species and of living more simply herself.
The author quotes Ernest Thomas Seton, in Wild Animals I Have Known, written in 1898: “No wild animal dies of old age. Its life has soon or late a tragic end. It is only a question of how long it can hold out against its foes.” I think the determination of the human species be able to live to old age has a negative effect on other species, but I don’t see humans giving up on that anytime soon.
What an outstanding book.
Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare, Pantheon Books, 2025, 285 pages (I read the kindle version). Available in the public library.