Everyone absolutely loved this book and found it uplifting.. This little wild animal put so much faith in the human who raised her.  The writing was beautifully crafted, capturing the beauty of the relationship between Chloe and the hare through the different seasons without one jot of sentimentality.  Many of us feared the end but Dalton knows that we will and does not supply that information - perhaps because the hare is still alive even after the afterword in the paperback edition but possibly because she will not offer any attachment or sentimentality to the reader, no matter what she, herself, feels,  Such is her determination to distinguish between this wild animal and pets.

One of the most engaging descriptions is about the hare eating a raspberry: 

"it would pick up the thimble-shaped cone in its mouth by one edge and slowly mash its jaws, drawing it in bead by bead while the raspberry bobbed up and down in front of its nose".  

We can see, hear and smell the raspberry as we read it.....

Chloe Dalton is a gifted, original writer, as the story never became repetitive even though much of it moves really slowly and gently as the hare grows up.  The descriptions of the hare - and her subsequent leverets - both in the house and in the garden were utterly captivating and engaging. The historical references were really interesting but, of course, the horrors of modern farming, hare coursing and human disregard for animal life is distressing and disheartening; not to mention the impact of climate change here in Scotland causing the rapid demise of our Mountain Hares.

The author's self-awareness, not only because she is in lockdown but because she is observing a mindful, gentle, wild animal with precise routines and actions of self-preservation and protection, increases over the years of observing the hare and her young.  Her attitude to her work and its priority in her life changes.  Her respect for her own self-preservation and protection increases.  All through witnessing the minute detail of a tiny creature and the others in the landscape around it.  Dalton has since become active in campaigns for change in the treatment of wild animals.

The group discussed the link between the treatment of hares and that of women over the centuries.  We also had a lively chat about the author's efforts not to anthropomorphise the hare and whether she had succeeded 100% or whether that is impossible.