My Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

This is a beautiful book, a joyous book but also a sad and thought provoking book. It is also possibly the best book that I will read this year, and I look forward to owning my own copy when it is published later this year.

This is a collection of stories from childhood through to adulthood and every place in between, stories from the UK and around the world. Each one is wonderful and unique in it’s own right and yet as a collection I don’t think I’ve ever come across one that is so well put together before. They are a nature insight, a personal story with feeling. Whether it is Golden Orioles or Fallow Deer, Swifts or Goat tipping (I’m not telling – you’ll have to read the book), these are all unique stories but instantly relatable.  Written with love and emotion; sometimes they make you smile, sometimes they make you cry and sometimes they send you off into your own personal rabbit hole about a particular species.

I savoured every story, I took my time reading and in some cases rereading a story, I learnt new things about species that I thought were familiar and new things about species I’ve never come across before. I was reminded about times I’ve had similar experiences and felt moved to go out and explore and experience something for myself.

I can’t recommend this book enough, whether you are drawn to natural history books or not this is worthy of your time and money and if you know someone who is into their natural history then this is probably the perfect gift for them.

Now I’ve finished reading, I want to go back and read the whole book again, although I will probably wait until I get my hands on a publication copy.

Vesper Flights is published on 27th August 2020 by Random House UK, Vintage

From the Publisher:

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.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided me with a free copy of this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. No other payment has been received.