The Running Hare – John Lewis-Stempel

Herefordshire farmer and nature writer, John Lewis-Stempel, is dismayed by modern intensive farming techniques that extinguish all wildlife, flora and fauna, in the pursuit of ever-increasing crop yield. He decides to take a conventionally farmed arable field and turn it into a traditional wheatfield. Other farmers think he is bonkers, or worse – dangerous, intent on reinfesting the land with pests and weeds. But he persists and manages to rent a field (along with adjacent paddock and woodland) for a year.

As he takes us through the farming year – ploughing, sowing, ripening, and harvest – we learn so much. About farming techniques, Lewis-Stempel may be a traditionalist but he’s no Luddite, and the science is as important as the lore. About wildflowers that used to adorn corn fields that given this chance, do so again. About the insect life that begins to thrive again, attracting birds and animal, culminating in the iconic hare.

It is a joyous celebration of nature, a demonstration of working in harmony with other creatures that have as much right to live off the land as we humans. The message is, there is enough for all. What is lost in productivity is well compensated by the proximity of wildlife and the pleasures that brings.

There are humorous anecdotes to add variety, and tangential flights into old writings, but the strength of the book is in the here and now of the comings and goings in the field.

Truly Darkly Deeply – Victoria Selman

When Sophie gets a letter from Battlemouth Prison she faces a dilemma. It is from Matty Melgren, convicted serial killer, now, twenty years on, terminally ill. He wants to see her. To see him would re-open old wounds and stir up old feelings. To see him could, at last, provide closure, for still, after all these years, she is not sure he is guilty and worries that her part in his arrest could have triggered a miscarriage of justice.

Sophie’s chewing over her current dilemma is spliced with her back story. How, aged six, she moved to London from the US with her mother, Amelia Rose (her father didn’t make the trip, having left before Sophie was old enough to remember). How Amelia Rose’s new boyfriend, Matty Melgren, soon became the father figure Sophie never had. How wonderful life was with Matty, though he never moved in and often went missing with work commitments.

How, increasingly, Sophie and Amelia Rose came to consider the awful possibility that Matty Melgren could be the North London serial killer.

Sophie’s narrative loops around in time, a tad confusingly (though this may be deliberate) and the guilt-tripping and handwringing gets a bit repetitive. The resolution of the did he / didn’t he issue involves a couple of revelations that are hard to swallow. So not the most satisfying read for me.