When the world closed down, Chloe Dalton moved from London to the English countryside. Her career in foreign policy and politics continued remotely, but it all seemed a lot less real than what was happening in her garden and in the fields beyond her wall.
A newborn hare, likely displaced by a dog, lay in the country lane. Dalton saw it on her walk. When – many hours later – it remained, Dalton decided to take it home.
Dalton writes with what seems to me a very English reserve in Raising Hare: A Memoir. She does not enthuse. She observes.
Like Alice, she is entranced by a wild creature, and she follows it into a new world. She does not domesticate the hare. If anything, it re-wilds her.
Denise Nestor’s brilliant pen and ink illustrations allow Hare to “breathe on the page,” in Dalton’s words. Dalton’s words bring hare to life in my heart.
Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk comes to mind, though I have forgotten almost all but my fond feelings for it.
Detail from “I C Patterns, Faded Glory” by Kerry Brock, currently exhibited at Bennett Galleries, Nashville