Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021
Animals don't exist to teach us things,but that is what they have always done,and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.
From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk comes Vesper Flights,a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world.
Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best-loved writing along with new pieces covering a thrilling range of subjects. There are essays here on headaches,on catching swans,on hunting mushrooms,on twentieth-century spies,on numinous experiences and high-rise buildings; on nests and wild pigs and the tribulations of farming ostriches.
Vesper Flights is a book about observation,fascination,time,memory,love and loss and how we make the world around us. Moving and frank,personal and political,it confirms Helen Macdonald as one of this century's greatest nature writers.
Publisher: Vintage PublishingISBN: 9780099575467Number of pages: 272Weight: 191 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 17 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Nature writing at its best... Helen Macdonald's eagerly awaited first book since H is for Hawk in 2014 is...all kinds of wondrous... I wanted to savour it,spinning it out across weeks,one chapter per evening,like a sort of lockdown Forty and One Nights of my own... Each and every essay reminded me what a gifted writer Macdonald is. Her prose is poetry but it also has a drenching kind of a clarity. And this is good because we shouldn't allow ourselves to be lulled by the sheer pleasure of reading her. For these are urgent pieces designed to open our eyes.'- Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller,Book of the Month
'The author of the deeply moving book H is for Hawk returns this month with Vesper Flights,a collection of essays about the relationship between humans and nature. Regarded as one of this century's greatest nature writers,Helen Macdonald takes simple moments - of nesting birds,wild boars emerging from the woods,foraging for mushrooms on an autumn day - and weaves them with history,personal reflection and political comment.'- Amy Barrett, BBC Science Focus Magazine
'(Macdonald's) prose is poetic but it also has a drenching clarity... These are urgent pieces designed to open our eyes to the parlous state of the environment... Vesper Flights is a vital book for now because it...shows us that in respecting this diversity lies both the joy and unity of our own species.'- Charlotte Heathcote,The Sunday Express
'This nature writer's long-awaited follow-up to her influential 2014 memoir H is for Hawk is a treat: dive into essays about headaches and high-rises,catching swans and farming ostriches.'- The Daily Telegraph
'Helen Macdonald's series of studies...show a remarkable eloquence,intelligence and empathy... Unfailingly acute.'- Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman
'From reflections on her childhood love of animals to sharp observations on the migrations of songbirds,the author of H is for Hawk fills her essay collection with vivid appreciation for the wildlife that surrounds us.'- Time Magazine,Summer Reads 2020
'H is for Hawk turned many a reader into a goshawk fan... This lyrical essay collection also explores human relationships with the natural world,but has a wider scope,taking in a search for the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests and swan-upping on the Thames.'- Country Living
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