Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing me the opportunity to read this ARC.
Helen MacDonald is the literary equivalent of David Attenborough. She tells the best stories all of which are true experiences. I love especially her bird stories whether it be swans, golden orioles, swifts or ostriches. Highly recommended collection of the author's essays.

5 stars/5 stars
I loved this book. Helen's writing is so beautiful . I am also a bird and nature enthusiast and her ability to tie the natural world to the human experience was incredible. I've given this book to many friends and family and I think it's a must read.

Stunning writing. A wide range of topics. This is a lovely book to chew on for some time. You can take your time with it, and I appreciate that about this book.

A wonderful collection of forty one pieces of writing relating to nature, especially birds. The author writes in an interesting and engaging way with a mix of personal experiences and researched material. Thoroughly enjoyable and I look forward to reading H is for Hawk also by the author.
Thank you to Net Galley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Vesper Flights é uma colecção de ensaios da autora do celebrado (magnífico) H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald.

São ensaios sobre a relação dos humanos com o mundo natural, cobrindo diversos temas, em que se destacam as aves.

São histórias fantásticas, curiosas e eloquentes, como da contagem dos cisnes da rainha, ou os maravilhosos voos dos andorilhões. Sabiam que há aves que nunca descem, que conseguem colocar metade do cérebro a dormir e permancem no ar? É absolutamente fascinante.

Aliás, sobre estes e os "vesper flights", podem ler um ensaio da autora no The New York Times (nytimes.com)


E sabem como se chamam aqueles "cardumes" (sim, sei que são bandos) sincronizados de estorninhos? Murmuration... será que se traduz para murmuração? Extraordinário.


Os ensaios, na voz eloquente de Helen Macdonald, combinam ciência com recordações de infância ou até reflexões da vida adulta, como a sua reverência e paixão por ninhos, durante a meninez ou um encontro a três: ela, o seu papagaio e um jovem no espectro autista.


Esta combinação de ensaios e memórias, é um dos meus géneros preferidos de não ficção e, Helen Macdonald é já um valor seguro.

Macdonald follows up her bestselling H is for Hawk with a collection of personal essay that cover a range of topics. The book is great to dip in and out of, time permitting, and it continues with many of the same themes that Macdonald introduced in the earlier book: grief, birds, and memory. But it also expands out into the larger natural world.

Helen did it again!! I was hoping this book would live up to H is for Hawk and it did that and more. I was not expecting the discussion around migraines and as someone who has chronic migraines this made me connect with Helen even more.

I really loved these essays and connected so much more with this collection than H is for Hawk. Helen Macdonald is for sure a must buy author for me now.

Unlike H is for Hawk, Vesper Flights is a collection of essays. I think the word ‘essay’ does not do it justice. While there are certain underlying themes that tie the collection together, each piece of writing also brims with beauty and closeness. I could have read the entire collection in one sitting —I even felt the need to write this review before finishing the book—, but I realized it is best enjoyed at a leisurely pace. Helen Macdonald’s evocative imagery translates into essays that sometimes read like a short story, producing a perfect balance between knowledge and emotion. I wanted to highlight every passage, not only for the sake of remembering information but also to remind me of how it made me feel.

A lot has been written about the relationship we keep with the natural world. For instance, walking in the woods is an activity that often brings us solace; yet we cannot deny that solitary contemplation is a bit of a narrow, one-sided approach. It is easy to escape conflict if we mute all voices but our own. We shape nature according to how we think it should look like, including perceptions that have been passed down to us. In these essays, Helen Macdonald encourages the reader to broaden their vision to include voices and experiences other than our own. The author’s style and vast knowledge work together to make us remember that, as pieces of a giant puzzle, it is key to stay grounded. Beyond the comfort and escapism that nature signifies for us, it is also an amalgam of life.

This is my first read of Macdonald's, and the audio was really well done. This is a collection of essays about our relationship with the natural world and the impact we have had on it, spoiler alert, it has not been the most positive. There were some essays that I enjoyed more than others, which is to be expected when it is a collection of 41 essays, but overall her writing is phenomenal and I am glad I read this one.

Thank you to LibroFM, NetGalley, and Grove Press for the ALC and digital galley to review.

Vesper Flights brings together a collection of essays that on the surface are about the birds she loves and cares for. With little effort, readers can unpack the greater feelings in the author's life that she uses her expert bird observations to help her understand and cope. The essays range in topics from grief, climate change, immigration, spiritualism, behavior, self-realization, and more.
Macdonald has brought another touching work of prose to readers. As those that have read H is for Hawk know, you do not have to be a fanatic bird watcher to enjoy and gain knowledge from these essays. Instead the essays caused me to make the time to stop and observe life with all it cohesion, interdependence, and synchronicities. I enjoyed this peaceful read and recommend it for those looking for something to read on vacation or as a vacation from everyday life.

Vesper Flights is a collection of essays that reflect on the natural world around us and humans role in that world. Macdonald is a very expressive writer, but there were times I began skimming the pages to get to a pet that interested me.

Vesper Flights – Helen Macdonald

I read H is for Hawk a little while ago, approximately 3 decades after everyone else. Well, not quite but I was definitely behind the curve. I confess that I think I avoided it partly because it was so overwhelmingly popular, and books that rise so high tend to be slightly disappointing, in my experience. (Captain Correlli, I’m looking at you). I also didn’t think the subject matter was particularly interesting. Woman buys hawk. Huh. I am so glad I got over myself to read it. Also glad because it meant I got to read this, relatively soon after publication.

Vesper Flights refers to the flights that swifts take, high up in the sky, in the summer evenings. It’s tied up with the Latin for ‘evening’ and has a devotional aspect too as it refers to the last prayers of the day. This idea sums up the essay collection well – strong themes of how we humans affect and are effected by the wildlife around us, how we find meaning in the smallest of places and similarly, how we’re ignoring the warning sirens going off around us in an attempt to pretend that nothing has changed.

I love this genre of writing – nature intertwined with people and our innermost selves. Macdonald’s writing reminds me a bit of Katherine May’s in Wintering. Somehow, by our soul searching into our most internal thoughts and feelings, we are more connected to the world around us, more in tune with what we should be doing and when, according to the seasons and the pull of the moon and sun.

This collection meant that it’s a book which seems to be designed to be dipped into, really, rather than read cover to cover, as I did. It meant that there were a couple of repetitive parts – birds described as angels, people we’d met before being re-introduced a couple of essays later. This is only a slight criticism, of course – and I might not have even noticed if I’d read it more slowly.

I know practically nothing about the outdoors, shamefully. I can’t identify birds, or plants, or trees – I can just about tell what a hedgehog looks like but I couldn’t tell you what they want to eat without googling it. This book, and H is for Hawk, makes it accessible, and Macdonald’s absolute passion for nature burns through the pages. I know about migration, about the birds used in the war as hapless spies, how the climate change we’re experiencing is affecting the birds we used to welcome to the UK, and crucially, how there is still hope. We need to leave space for our feathered friends, not just for them but for us – we need them just as much. To keep the food chain in balance, yes, but also to brighten our lives with birdsong and flashes of colour. The encouragement to get out into the world, to really look instead of just seeing what’s in front of you, is such a powerful drive – I want to do that too.

I also thought the writing about class in bird keeping was fascinating – about how swans and ducks on estates have a ligament cut in their wings so they can’t fly, which is deemed in large part to be socially acceptable. On the other hand though, keeping sparrows, feeding pigeons and foxes – morally corrupt and to be decried in the press.

Next time you’re looking out the window of the building you’re in, or the car/train/bus you’re travelling in, see how much you can see in the fields as you flash past. Or the tree on the corner of the street. It’s there if you want to find it, and we have a responsibility to protect and care for this planet we’re all living on.

Thanks as always to NetGalley and to Grove Atlantic for the DRC.

Another lovely and lyrical essay collection from the author of H is for Hawk. Macdonald uses the natural world as as inspiration to write about her childhood, immigration, and other seemingly more mundane aspects of modern life, like losing and replacing her passport. Will appeal to readers who enjoy nature and memoirs.

I wish I hadn't waited this long to read Helen Macdonald. Her erudite reflections about the natural world are not stuffy or self-indulgent. Instead, Macdonald's essays are flush with nostalgia and keen observations about love, loss, time and the world around us. What a gift.

So articulate, so fascinating and dealing with a world of perspective that is unapologetically personal. Helen Macdonald is a force in the realm of humanity and its role in the natural world. A don't miss.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I loved the author's naturalist memoir h is for hawk and was gratified to get a copy of this new offering from the publisher.  I started reading it and realized that I missed listening to the author read her own work.  So I got an audiobook copy and felt that was the best way for me to experience these stories.

Unlike her previous book, this is not one larger narrative but rather a series of essays and snippets on various topics.  I listened to this in short bursts and this was both the highlight and the weakness.  I would have loved many of the topics to be explored in more depth but also found the majority of the subjects fascinating.

The favorite was the titular story which concerned swifts.  I knew nothing about them and was spellbound reading about them and then proceeded to share facts about the birds with every person I came across that day.  Other awesome topics included search for life near volcanoes, ostrich farming, and the market for finches.  Birds are a central theme to this work.

What makes this collection so wonderful is not just the animal facts but how the author muses on nature, philosophy, history, climate change, politics, etc.  It is not heavy handed, even when I don't agree with the viewpoint, but it is thought-provoking.  Macdonald views the world in ways I don't and that makes this book so worth reading.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank ye kindly Grove Press!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for kindly providing me with a digital copy of this book for review.
For full disclosure, I have read this author’s previous memoir called ‘H is for Hawk’, which is very successful and popular. I didn’t love that book as much as everyone else, although I didn’t hate it either. So I therefore approached this book with a little trepidation and just wondered if I didn’t quite gel with this author’s writing style. However, I found that I actually enjoyed this essay collection a lot more than the memoir. I’m not sure if this is because this collection covers a wide range of subjects and I found more to connect with. I particularly connecting with the essay discussing Brexit, nationalism, national identity, hate crime and immigration. I really wasn’t expecting to find a discussion of this kind in a piece of nature writing, but like I say, what Helen McDonald had to say resonated with me quite a bit.
I feel that there’s something to interest everyone in this collection and it might be well read by dipping in and reading one essay at a time rather than straight through as I have done, but I definitely enjoyed this and would recommend.

I adored this book.
Helen Macdonald has written a lovely set of essays sharing author's many encounters with the natural world, particularly birds. These essays move from personal experiences into wider aspects about love ,loss and human nature. Essays are a mix of memoir, scientific research of animals/birds and nature and also social issues.

Macdonald certainly writes with passion and enthusiasm about nature and the world around us. This book surely made me pause and look around. And I found out that I can only name 5% of the birds around me. Now I make sure that I learn the name of each and every bird around me.

Beautiful book.


Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange of a Honest Review.

“What science does is what I would like more literature to do too: show us that we are living in an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us. It does not belong to us alone. It never has done.”

“None of us sees animals clearly. They’re too full of the stories we’ve given them. Encountering them is an encounter with everything you’ve learned about them from previous sightings, from books, images, conversations. Even rigorous scientific studies have asked questions of animals in ways that reflect our human concerns.”

This was a very hit or miss collection of essays for me. I found many of them excessively twee. My experience might have been better if I had read them serialized in a weekly newspaper rather than reading them one after another. I preferred the essays that were actually about other animals rather than the ones that were primarily about the author and/or other humans. I particularly liked “Vesper Flights” and “Rescue” which were about swifts. The essay titled “Goats” was just dumb and I also didn’t care for the essay in which the author killed an ostrich and intentionally (and moronically) started a stampede. 3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.