Skip to content
Account Login Winnipeg Toll-Free: 1-800-561-1833 SK Toll-Free: 1-877-506-7456 Contact & Locations

parsed(2020-08-25) - pubdate: 2020-08-25
turn:
pub date: 1598331600
today: 1711602000, pubdate > today = false

nyp: 0;

Vesper Flights

August 25, 2020 | Hardcover
ISBN: 9780735235502
$29.95
Reader Reward Price: $26.96 info
Out of stock. Available to order from publisher. We will confirm shipping time when order has been placed.
Checking Availibility...

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SILVER MEDALIST for the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature

From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk, a brilliant and insightful work about our relationship to the natural world


Our world is a fascinating place, teeming not only with natural wonders that defy description, but complex interactions that create layers of meaning. Helen Macdonald is gifted with a special lens that seems to peer right through it all, and she shares her insights--at times startling, nostalgic, weighty, or simply entertaining--in this masterful collection of essays.

From reflections on science fiction to the true story of an Iranian refugee's flight to the UK, Macdonald has a truly omnivorous taste when it comes to observations of both the banal and sublime. Peppered throughout are reminisces of her own life, from her strange childhood in an estate owned by the Theosophical Society to watching total eclipses of the sun, visits to Uzbek solar power plants, eccentric English country shows, and desert hunting camps in the Gulf States.

These essays move from personal experiences into wider meditations about love and loss and how we build the world around us. Whether more journalistic in tone, or literary--even formally experimental--each piece is generous, lyrical, and speaks to one another. Macdonald creates a strong thematic undertow that quietly takes the reader along piece to piece and sets them down, finally, at a place they've never been before.

About this Author

HELEN MACDONALD is a writer, poet, and naturalist. She is the author of the bestselling and award-winning H is for Hawk and Vesper Flights, and three books of poetry, including Shaler's Fish. She's written and presented award-winning documentaries for PBS and the BBC and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine.

ISBN: 9780735235502
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2020-08-25

Reviews

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SILVER MEDALIST for the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature
Named a Best Book of the Summer by Entertainment Weekly, TIME, and Literary Hub


One of:
The Washington Post's "10 books to read in August"
Lit Hub's "Most Anticipated Books of 2020"
USA Today's "5 books not to miss"
NPR's "best books of 2020"
The Guardian's "Best books of 2020"
TIME Magazine's "Must-Read" books of 2020


Praise for Vesper Flights:

"Helen Macdonald's Vesper Flights sees wonder--and refuge--in the natural world. . . . her work is an antidote to so much romantic, reductive writing about the natural world as pristine, secret, uninhabited. . . . Macdonald experiments with tempo and style, as if testing out different altitudes and finding she can fly at just about any speed. . . . I was reminded of the goshawk, so thickly plumed, so powerful that it can bring down a deer, and yet it weighs only a few pounds. These are the very paradoxes of Macdonald's prose--its lightness and force."
--The New York Times

"An essential writer on nature, humanity, and loss. Macdonald fills her narratives with vivid descriptions of the wildlife that surrounds us."
--TIME

"The essays in Vesper Flights prove that [Macdonald] is a nature writer on par with Annie Dillard, one whose keen observations about everything from migrations to mushrooms intertwine with a compassionate perspective on her fellow humans."
--The Washington Post

"[Vesper Flights] retains the essential wonder of classic nature writing . . ."
--The New Yorker
 
"[A] stunning book that urges us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world, and fight to preserve it. . . . Macdonald is endlessly thoughtful, but she's also a brilliant writer--Vesper Flights is full of sentences that reward re-reading because of how exquisitely crafted they are. . . . [Macdonald] writes with an almost breathless enthusiasm that can't be faked; she's a deeply sincere author in an age when ironic detachment seems de rigueur. . . . Vesper Flights is a beautiful and generous book, one that offers hope to a world in desperate need of it."
--NPR

"A profound meditation on life and freedom."
--Entertainment Weekly  

"Thrilling dispatches from a vanishing world."
-Observer

"Vesper Flights is a book of ideas and urgent, beautiful writing... [Macdonald] is a writer whose every word is to be cherished."
-Spectator

"Helen Macdonald is one of the best nature writers now working."
-Telegraph

"Gorgeously composed, complexly affecting, and stunningly revelatory. Macdonald is both exacting and enthralled... There is abundant wonder and beauty here. Best-selling Macdonald's fans will rush to embrace this, as should all readers passionate about nature."
--Booklist (starred review)  

"An inviting collection... infused with wonder, nostalgia, and melancholy."
--Publishers Weekly

"[An] altogether memorable collection . . . Exemplary writing about the intersection of the animal and human worlds."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Macdonald ensures you won't see certain things the same way after reading Vesper Flights: birds' nests, field guides, boars, and other surprising miscellany. My favorite essay, 'High Rise'--about the life that exists above us, in the rarefied domain of skyscrapers--best encapsulates Macdonald's call for us to imagine a more aesthetically and morally complex world."
--LitHub, "Best New Books to Read This Summer"

"[Vesper Flights is] a powerful--and entertaining--corrective to the idea that the only hopes that matter on this planet are those of our own species."
--The Guardian
 
"Dazzling . . . Macdonald reminds us how marvellously unfamiliar much of the nonhuman world remains to us, even as we continue to diminish it."
-Wall Street Journal
 
"Macdonald's writing captures the inexpressible rhythm of being... [Her] essays are, if anything, murmurations for our ominous time--dark yet flashing, stirred from the core."
-USA Today
 
"For many this year, the great outdoors has been the great beyond, rendering it impossible to feel at one with nature. For this reason, Vesper Flights is essential reading right now. But it is also a book to relish at any time, both for its intelligence and grace, and its ability to edify and enchant in equal measure."
-Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Macdonald is a glorious writer. . . . Perfect to drop in and out of on your staycation, this book with make you look a bit harder at the wonders around you."
--Evening Standard
 
"In Vesper Flights . . . Macdonald lets her exceptionally original mind wander amid a long list of subjects: lunar eclipses, migraine headaches, mushroom hunting, and nocturnal bird-watching."
--Boston Globe

 "[Vesper Flights] shows no one describes nature more beautifully. . . . These essays reveal wonders around you, wherever you're quarantined. . . . It's as if her words have flipped the world upside down, and the effect is exhilarating."
--Slate
 
"In this collection of essays . . . [Macdonald] applies her bright, sensitive prose to encounters with swifts and a solitary boar; to the magic of woods in winter or a chalk quarry dotted with glow-worms on a hot summer's night. Her capacity for wonder is infectious."
--New Statesman

"Macdonald skillfully links her own experiences not only with the natural, wild world but with a very human world. There is grief, but also abundant wonder. Helen Macdonald will change the way you see the world, and all of its creatures--yourself included."
--OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
 
 "[B]old. . . . [These essays] show a remarkable eloquence, intelligence and empathy. . . . In terms of the connections between nature and capitalism, [Macdonald] is unfailingly acute."
--The Scotsman

"Macdonald has a wonderful gift for exploring the intersection between nature and our experience of it, in writing that is both lyrical and impassioned."
--The Guardian

"Is anyone better at writing birds on the page? No. . . .  Macdonald knows how to tell a story, and she also knows how to reach a sublime place in her writing--where things feel awful and wonderful, all at once. Vesper Flights is an essay collection, always in conversation with the natural world, birds, nostalgia, the countryside, and time."
--Electric Literature

If the product is in stock at the store nearest you, we suggest you call ahead to have it set aside for you, or you may place an order online and choose in-store pickup.