Caly recommends... The Leveret - Anna Goldreich

An overwhelmingly moving and muddy portrait of care, loss, queerness and the land - will definitely be one of my top reads this year, this was INCREDIBLE!

Wild with grief, grub and intimacy, we follow Clare and Phoebe as they try to navigate the loss of their baby, and a surprising new relationship formed with a leveret found in the tall grass of their rural farmhouse... 

Written in glittering, lyrical prose, this is an amazingly accomplished and fleshy tale of yearning, abandon and the echoing distances that grow between people in times of unimaginable despair. Sticky, earthy and vibrating with empathy, we cannot recommend this book enough! 

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Moving to the countryside is supposed to fix Clare and Phoebe’s relationship. A fresh start, a change of scenery, a chance to heal after the miscarriage of their baby girl. Instead, Phoebe feels suffocated.

Back in the rural community she ran from at seventeen and unable to face the partner she cannot help, she throws herself into work on the family farm. Clare is a stranger in the village, uninitiated and out of place. She spends her days drifting around the cottage, its walls groaning and shifting as she withdraws into a world inside her head.

One day, wandering through the forest nearby, Clare finds a leveret – her own little Isla. A surrogate to lick and love. A way to feel whole again.

But as Isla grows into an adult hare she becomes wild and unruly – a kicking, biting, scratching creature. With Clare’s grasp on reality growing ever more tenuous, Phoebe begins to question whether Isla is the cure for grief Clare is searching for as she desperately clings on to the woman she loves . .