From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk comes a transcendent collection of essays about the natural world
Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator and historian. Her book H is for Hawk won many prizes, including the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Costa Book of the Year, the Prix due Meilleur Livre Etranger in France, and in the US was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She writes a regular column in New York Times Magazine, and lives in Suffolk.
Thrilling dispatches from a vanishing world... A powerful - and
entertaining - corrective to the idea that the only hopes that
matter on this planet are those of our own species.
*Observer*
Vesper Flights is a book of ideas and urgent, beautiful writing...
[Macdonald] is a writer whose every word is to be cherished.
*Spectator*
Helen Macdonald is one of the best nature writers now working.
*Telegraph *Books of the Year**
Nature writing at its best... All kinds of wondrous... 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.
*Bookseller *Book of the Month**
An antidote to so much romantic, reductive writing about the
natural world... Macdonald's writing teems with other voices and
perspectives, with her own challenges to herself. It muddies any
facile ideas about nature and the human, and prods at how we pleat
our prejudices, politics and desires into our notions of the animal
world... Hers is a gritty, companionable intimacy with the wild...
The essays...are short, varied and highly edible.
*New York Times*
Those who have read Helen Macdonald's memoir H is for Hawk will be
familiar with her ability to weave together natural, cultural and
personal history and to tease out the deeper meanings of our
encounters with the wild... She applies her bright, sensitive prose
to encounters with swifts and a solitary boar; to the magic of
woods in winter or a chalk quarry dotted with glow-worms on a hot
summer's night. Her capacity for wonder is infectious.
*New Statesman*
An excellent collection... Macdonald is so joyously and excitedly
in love with the natural world around her it is difficult not to
share in this rapture, but so, too, in her sense of loss...
Compelling and urgent.
*Arts Desk*
[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... A vital book for now because
it... shows us that in respecting this diversity lies both the joy
and unity of our own species.
*Sunday Express*
Full of treasures... Couched in scientific learning... The
pleasures of Vesper Flights are the pleasures of any literature;
the lucidity of thought, the sensual tactility of the words
(Macdonald can make you feel the bristle of the beetles that catch
in her hair on a summer night), the comfort of the familiar and the
thrill of the strange. But it is combined here with a real urgency,
an awareness of our human imprint on the world and the damage that
is doing.
*Herald Scotland*
A powerful collection of essays... Sensitive and intelligent, these
essays are full of gorgeous images and moving insights... A perfect
escape.
*Independent *Books of the Year**
One of this century's greatest nature writers.
*BBC Science Focus Magazine *Books of the Year**
Vivid, deeply informed, emotionally charged... [Vesper Flights] can
startle you.
*Telegraph*
Helen Macdonald's series of studies...show a remarkable eloquence,
intelligence and empathy... Unfailingly acute.
*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**
Helen Macdonald's new essays are no flights of fancy, as she
examines who has the right to define and be the gatekeepers to the
natural world... [Vesper Flights shares] many of the qualities of H
is for Hawk - frankness, reflective thinking, formidable powers of
observation and wordcraft.
*Scotsman*
Macdonald is a glorious writer... This book will make you look a
bit harder at the wonders around you.
*Evening Standard*
Interesting and accomplished... Vesper Flights establishes her
[Macdonald] as a penetrating analyst of the relationship between
humans and the non-human world... She is splendid company
reflecting on nests and the meaning of home and place.
*Oldie*
I finished the book seeing the natural world, and my place within
it, afresh.
*BBC Wildlife*
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.
*BBC Science Focus Magazine*
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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