Review: "Vesper Flights," Helen Macdonald

 By Paul Carrier

When British naturalist Helen Macdonald, an accomplished falconer, released H Is for Hawk a few years back, I was mesmerized by the beauty and power of this unforgettable memoir. It chronicles a devastated Macdonald’s determination to raise a female goshawk as she tries to cope with the untimely loss of her father, who died at 67.

Now MacDonald is back with Vesper Flights, a collection of several dozen essays focused almost entirely on the natural world.

Vesper Flights displays less intensity than H Is for Hawk, but it is equally compelling. Insightful, moving and sometimes humorous, it is the work of a gifted author who recalls someone telling her that all writers have one subject that underlies everything they write.

“I choose to think that my subject is love,” MacDonald says, “and most specifically love for the glittering world of non-human life around us.”