Vesper Flights

Starred review from May 15, 2020
Falconer and writer Macdonald follows on elegant memoir H Is for Hawk (2015) with a set of essays on nature. "I choose to think that my subject is love," writes the author at the beginning, "and most specifically love for the glittering world of non-human life around us." Love sometimes turns to lamentation as she notes how much of the natural world has been destroyed in her lifetime. There are some particularly wonderful moments in this altogether memorable collection, as when Macdonald recounts retreating from a shy girlhood, teased and even bullied by her schoolmates, with the aid of binoculars and field guides that allowed her to escape into a different, better world: "This method of finding refuge from difficulty was an abiding feature of my childhood." Later in that passage, she continues, "when I was a child I'd assumed animals were just like me. Later I thought I could escape myself by pretending I was an animal. Both were founded on the same mistake. For the deepest lesson animals have taught me is how easily and unconsciously we see other lives as mirrors of our own." The author also recounts her treks looking for wild boars, the descendants of once-domesticated pigs that are now not quite like pigs at all, having reclaimed ancestral fierceness. Macdonald allows that while her encounters with such creatures are eminently real, she's fully open to the possibilities of symbolic encounter as well. Anthropomorphism may be a sin among biologists, but as long as it doesn't go to silly lengths, she's not above decorating a nest box--and those decorations, she writes in a perceptive piece, are as class-inflected as anything else in class-conscious Britain. Perhaps the finest piece is also the most sobering, a reflection on the disappearance of spring, "increasingly a short flash of sudden warmth before summer, hardly a season at all." Exemplary writing about the intersection of the animal and human worlds.

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Starred review from June 1, 2020
Swifts are magical, writes bird-obsessed Macdonald, author of the beloved H Is for Hawk (2015). They ascend at twilight in what are called vesper flights, attaining soaring altitudes high enough to enable them to forecast the weather, orient themselves, and determine what they should do next. A collective approach such as this, Macdonald suggests, is crucial for our own species as we face the start of a planetary ecological breakdown. What we can and must learn from nature is the prevailing theme throughout this collection's 41 essays, each gorgeously composed, complexly affecting, and stunningly revelatory. Macdonald is both exacting and enthralled as she describes glowworms, hares, ants, swans, migrating birds seen at night from the top of the Empire State Building, the paradoxes of nature reserves, tree disease, storms, the lessons in denial and prediction embedded in migraines, how wild mushrooms signal a hidden larger whole, and the shock felt by every living entity during a total solar eclipse. Macdonald offers a glimpse into her unusual childhood, and accompanies intrepid astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol on expeditions to dangerous places to study life's phenomenal adaptation to extremes. There is abundant wonder and beauty here, but they are shadowed by concern and grief because the north to which Macdonald's compass points is climate change and its ravaging of life's intricate web, from the monumental to the microbial.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Macdonald's fans will rush to embrace this, as should all readers passionate about nature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2020

British writer historian Macdonald follows her best seller H Is for Hawk with a collection of nature essays, some new and some previously published. Though this collection looks at many kinds of natural phenomena--from swifts, Eurasion cranes, and hawfinches to deer, boar, fens, and the possibility of life on Mars--each essay reveals how animals and nature have broadened and altered the author's way of looking at the world. Some of her most compelling stories explore "the strange collisions and collusions" between natural history and British national history: swan upping, the swan census conducted annually on the Thames River, is a centuries-old ceremony deeply connected to monarchy and pageantry. In addition, the phenomenon of British spies being bird enthusiasts is examined in the intriguing profile of Maxwell Knight, a long-time MI5 spy handler. Written in Macdonald's trademark piercing prose, these essays probe the author's fascination with the complexity, mystery, and magic of nature, including how we observe the world around us and make sense of our place within it. VERDICT Macdonald's unique voice is highly recommended for fans of her first book and science enthusiasts who enjoy natural history with a British flavor. [See Prepub Alert, 2/12/20.]--Cynthia Lee Knight, formerly with Hunterdon Cty. Lib., Flemington, NJ

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2020

Want to soar as you did while reading Macdonald's New York Times best-selling, Samuel Johnson- and Costa Award-winning, multi-best-booked H Is for Hawk? Then grab this rich collection of essays both newly minted and previously published, ranging in subject from the shrinking countryside to the migration of songbirds through New York City's Tribute in Light to wild boars, mushroom hunting, birds' nests, and the private vespers she holds while trying to fall asleep. With a 12-city tour.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.