Vesper flights new and collected essays
"In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captiv...
| Main Author: | Macdonald, Helen, 1970- (Author) |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Grove Press,
2020.
|
| Edition: | First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
"In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing songbirds from the Empire State Building as they migrate through the Tribute of Light, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, and seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. By one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us"-- |
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| Item Description: |
First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Jonathan Cape. |
| Physical Description: |
ix, 261 pages ; 22 cm |
| ISBN: |
9780802128812 0802128815 |
| Author Notes: |
Helen Macdonald is an English writer, naturalist and academic at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of H is for Hawk, which won the Samuel Johnson prize. This book is a depiction of the grief and depression she fell into after the sudden death of her father in 2007 and how she bounced back through falconry. H is for Hawk, which has just won the £20,000 prize, describes the year Macdonald spent training a goshawk. She writes about subsuming her grief in the relationship with the bird and trying to be like her: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. Her book is the first memoir to win the prize. She will be at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival in 2015. (Bowker Author Biography) |