One of these non-fiction books that reads like fiction. An illustration of how when one focuses one’s attention on something for a long time and really really looks at it in depth and with concentration they can discover a whole new and exciting world.
A professional woman used to the hustle and bustle of international politics from London to the Middle East as her occupation, is forced to live alone in a farmhouse about an hour away from the big city – it is the time of Covid and lockdown. She finds a leveret, a baby hare, in the winter field and saves it. This starts a relationship between the narrator and the wild animal that is worth tracking for 155 pages. The main characters – narrator and animal, remain nameless, the animal never becomes a pet, and the narrator never quite the owner, even though she has to take the hare to the vet at some point and fill in a form with a field for “owner.” This uncanny relationship makes the woman discover new things about her own life as a human. She tries not to ascribe human features to the hare as she endeavors to understand at least a small aspect of the nature of the wild creature that remains a mystery to the end. The book is wonderfully written, never falling into the traps of “cuteness” and sentimentality. It uncovers, through the eyes of the narrator, a world of serenity and danger in wilderness, and offers a new understanding of nature, by making it “interesting” – from the grass seeds to the beady eye of the hare following her moves and the predatory hawks criss-crossing the sky, that is worth knowing and loving.
