Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t love this book and therefore didn’t finish, I just didn’t connect with this one. Not for me, sorry.

This powerful book is quite the adult companion to Robert Macfarlane’s ‘The Lost Words’. This is a collection of essays contemplating politics, religion and our relationship with each other and our fellow creatures on this beautiful yet often brutal planet.
It will resonate highly with many questioning souls as we all grapple with our place as stewards of the natural world.
Thank you to Net galley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Vesper Flights is Helen Macdonald’s latest book chronicling her relationship with nature. This is slightly different from her previous books in the respect it’s not a linear narrative but a collection of essays that also explores “The human relationship with nature”.

We are given more of an insight into Macdonald’s upbringing as she regales us with anecdotes of emotional journeys to her childhood home and dark episodes on a falcon breeding farm in Wales. Her passion for nature and the natural world comes across strongly, without sermonising. In one chapter she mentions Fox hunting and how she’s morally opposed to it, without admonishing those that do partake in it. A common thread throughout the essays is how we can be so involved with the conservation of nature yet still be so detached from it. Admittedly it’s something that I’ve never even thought about before, so I’ll be paying more attention to the way I interact with the world around me from now on.
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One thing that seems to draw me in with Mcdonald’s writing is that there always seems to be an underlying sadness in the way she writes. Even when she’s partaking in a stunning bird-watching event, she never quite gives herself over to the joy and excitement of that moment. At one point after reading how she once covered herself in mud and twigs and stalked a herd of cows I just wanted to put my arms around her and ask if she’s ok. (Oddly enough in the same chapter there is a very dark incident with a dying Ostrich, but it was the incident with the cows that worried me most)
I’d be interested to read something Macdonald wrote before her father passed away. It is obvious that the death of her father did have a profound effect on her, and it would be curious to see if that is also what has influenced this mournful quality in her writing.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a critique in any way I like the way she can convey the melancholy of a murmuration. As a perpetually positive person, I do need to be prodded with the emotion stick every now and again.
There is a line in one of the essays “I shouldn’t do it also because pulling at your heart on purpose is a compulsion as particular and disconcerting as pressing on a healing bruise” so maybe she gets some cathartic pleasure from heartache. I’m envious; I lost both my parents within a few years of each other and I find it very hard to engage in any strong emotions regarding this. I miss them, but I think my innate ability to detach myself from unpleasant situations has worked a little too well here and I can’t articulate exactly how that makes me feel.
Woah, so that was a major digression, let’s put that brick back and summarise the review, shall we?
After reading Vesper Flights, even if you don’t like the whole book, I defy you not to have a favourite chapter. It’s close but I think I liked ‘Goats’ the best, as not only is it a funny story, but you can practically hear the little smile as Macdonald reminisces about her dad

A Treat for Nature Lovers Everywhere

It took me a long time to finish this five-star banquet of a book from Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk. Not because I wasn’t enjoying it. Quite the contrary – I was prolonging the pleasure of reading, re-reading and mulling over this catholic collection of new and collected essays, all of which reflect her acute observational skills, her unending patience and her determination in pursuing her passion – the natural world in all its infinite variety and complexity.

The essays cover her travels from the U.S.A. to Antarctica, from the U.K. and Europe to Australia and many places in between, and cover topics as varied as insects, eclipses, Swan Upping, childhood memories and mushrooms, to name but a few, and as expected from the book’s title, many are about birds.

A few essays sat uneasily on my mind, most resonated deeply within my psyche, and many mourn the loss of a simpler, more natural world and a way of life long lost in the name of progress.

The essays are without exception all beautifully written. The author paints pictures with words, and such powers of description are seldom encountered and an absolute joy to read. The honesty of the writing reveals even more of herself than she did in H is for Hawk, and I shall be looking forward impatiently to her next book …

I have no hesitation in awarding Vesper Flights five stars. If I could give it more, I would!

Bennie Bookworm

The Elite Reviewer Group received a copy of the book to review.

This is a beautifully-written book, which is perfect to dip in and out of. For that reason I have been reading it for several months, and would prefer to have a physical book to pick up and put down. That is no criticism of the book, however, which I would recommend to anyone who loves nature writing.

A beautiful collection of nature essays on a whole variety of topics. Much of what Helen Macdonald writes about resonates with me, particularly longing for an otter as a child 🦦. This book is definitely one to come back to and
re-read; I think you could take something new from it every single time.

I missed out on H is For Hawk and I could kick myself (although I will absolutely return to it after this). There are nature writers who can sometimes dazzle us with their use of academic language and (not intentionally) make it hard for us ordinary peeps to follow what they're trying to say. Not Helen. She is a gifted storyteller. She knows her stuff when it comes to birds and animals but her talent lies in being able to weave in background information, statistics and experts in this series of short stories about her relationship with different animals (mainly birds) she has come across over the years. From watching the migratory path of birds while on top of the Empire State Building to her encounter with a boar to an autistic child's meeting with her parrot - I was enchanted. Thank you Helen.

A beautiful collection of essays on a wide variety of subjects but threaded through with a love and concern over the natural world. Helen Macdonald is a wonderful writer, her imagery is all encompassing and emotive and she wraps you up in her topic of choice and leaves you with much to ponder and process. I had to slow myself down whilst reading this book, I was gobbling up the writing when it deserved to be savoured and lingered over. A highly recommended collection that I will, without a doubt, be returning to in years to come.

I've read nature books before but never one like this.
This book is filled with different essays about nature each making me think about the writing and the points being made.
Each essay covers different species and countries I liked the length of most of the essays however some could have done with being a little longer.
I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would the writing was very good and really made me think about the nature and the world around us.
It would have been nice to learn more about the author, Helen Mcdonald as even though she put herself in some of the essays I didn’t feel like I learnt much about her.

If you've read 'H is for Hawk' you'll either be desperate to get a copy of this book or approaching it with some trepidation. How could Helen Macdonald match that tremendous account of the wonder of nature and the ravages of grief?

This is quite different but it is equally beautiful, fascinating and brilliant.

A collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world, this is a book to dip into but, arguably, once you start reading, you won't want to stop.

If you've been following Helen Macdonald's writing, you'll be able to enjoy some of her best-loved pieces alongside new essays covering a wide span of subjects. There are swifts, swans and ostriches, foraging for mushrooms, high-rise buildings and spies, as well as tips on how to go to sleep, make decisions and cope with headaches.

It's comforting and stimulating, personal and poignant, uplifting and thought-provoking. So much to mull over and to wonder, and it sets you off in all sorts of other directions too. A joy to read.

Thank you for the opportunity of reading the book. Unfortunately, the book was archived before I was able to download/read it.

This book is filled with love letters to nature. These individual essays are great to dip into on a grey day and feel the warmth of the sun through the pages. The writing is sublime and a balm to the soul. Read it when you need a pick me up.

I loved this book. When everyone was reading H is for Hawk, we recognised the depth and understanding and significance of Macdonald's voice, but the grief she captured in the earlier book was overwhelming. Vesper Flights is a book of essays which are each deep, but most with a light touch, and a reverence for the beauty of the world without pretense. I love reading about her personal growth and understanding, and the loss of the nature that she grew up with.
Her most significant achievement is that she subverts our view that nature is here to be enjoyed, and rather convinces the reader that nature simply is, and we find our more rightful place in it by seeing ourselves as simply part of the economy of natural beings, without morality or politic or power. I look forward to her next work and I hugely recommend this.

A solid collection of nature essays, Vesper Flights is Macdonald's follow-up to the widely acclaimed H is for Hawk.

There are over 40 different essays in this book, spanning different species and countries, with most of the pieces only taking up a handful of pages. Some of the essays are perfectly formed snippets leaving the reader wanting more (in a good way), however overall I do think the brevity of many of the pieces are to the book's detriment. Some would have certainly had more impact had they been afforded a larger page count, and I felt some didn't add much to the book and could have been left out. Macdonald also inserts herself into a lot of the essays, yet I still finished reading feeling like I knew very little about her - except for the fact that swans make her cry.

Fans of nature writing and those looking for a wholesome book to dip in and out of will likely find something to enjoy here, but as I'd gone into this expecting something more in the vein of Kathleen Jamie I have to admit to feeling slightly disappointed by this book.

Vesper Flights is a collection of essays which explore the natural world around us and our emotional and physical reaction to it. Each beautifully crafted essay looks at a natural phenomenon – the flights of birds, their nests, the mysterious world of mushrooms, even ostrich farming – and helps us to relate the lessons we can learn from it about our own lives. How diving in high altitude lakes could help us learn about life on other planets, how thinking about the way that birds flock, and seemly move as one, should make us think again about our attitude to migrants in our own, human, world, and how recalling the memory of a particularly moving natural phenomena can feel like travelling back in time to experience it over and over again. But it can also be read just for the beauty of the words themselves: the writing is wonderful – descriptive, sometimes poetic and occasionally almost angry – reading it made me promise myself to go back out into the nature all around me (even if just into my garden) to appreciate it all over again.

Beautifully written essays from the author of H Is for Hawk linked by a theme of humankind's relationship with nature. I particularly enjoyed the meeting on the observation deck of the Empire State Building to track the usually unseen movements of birds migrating over the Manhattan sky. I'd read some of these essays before, online and in the New Statesman, but several were new to me. Recommended.

Helen MacDonald's first book was a tour de force and this has the potential to be just as influential. Rich, evocative and very moving, it takes flight from the first page.

A beautiful cabinet of wonders, elegiac and funny and precisely, elegantly written. Macdonald's prose is luminous, and her empathy and curiosity apparently boundless.

In this book Helen Macdonald shows the connection between humans and nature wherever you are. It's an unavoidable fact and I'm sure everyone will relate to these one way or another.
It was a great book as expected.
Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

Helen MacDonald shows in these essays the unavoidable connection between humans and nature. With essays across varying topics there is something here for everyone, whether you live in a cabin in the wilderness or the urban jungle.