John Fitzgerald
Member
To mark (not celebrate!) forty years of campaigning for the protection of the endangered Irish Hare, I’ve just published a novel.
In my childhood I read Richard Adams’ classic Watership Down, and was enthralled by it. That was about the adventures of a group of rabbits. For the past two and a half years I’ve worked on a kind of Watership Down for hares. It’s a very different story of course and set in an entirely different time and place.
Time to Stop Running is a fantasy adventure novel for all ages: It tells the story of Tipsy, a hare living on an Irish offshore island who discovers he’s psychic. Normally the island hares can only communicate with each other, but Tipsy can talk to all other species...except humans.
There are no humans living on the island, but the ruins of houses, stone walls, and a monastic settlement remain, reminders of their past presence and serving nicely as shelter for the hares. Otherwise, hares only know of humans from stories and legends passed down to them.
But then, from across the tempestuous ocean the humans return...not to set up home, but as invaders to capture hares. The captives are taken in boats back to that mysterious Big Island that can be seen on clear days from the beach or cliff-top.
Tipsy is summoned to the cave of the Golden Hare, the reclusive spiritual leader of the island hares. He is assigned a mission that will take him into a strange and terrible land, with enemies to face that make the falcon, his main predatory foe, look almost benign by comparison.
Apart from Tipsy and a large cast of minor characters- including a fox, a badger, and a temperamental cat- that populate the novel, there are two principal human characters: Annemarie Cristobel takes up the cause of the Irish Hare after a chance sighting of an incident that leaves her shocked and shaken; and there’s Waxy Bumbleton-Crossbar, Secretary of Ballycrossways Coursing Club. He’s deeply committed to the blood sport and believes there’s only one way to persuade politicians to safeguard his “traditional country pastime.”
In writing this novel, I hope to highlight the plight of the Irish Hare, an animal renowned in song, literature, and folklore whose survival is now threatened on many fronts.
The Irish Hare is a sub-species of the Mountain Hare and is unique to Ireland. It has been around since before the last Ice Age of 10,000 years ago but has been in decline for the past half-century, mainly due to loss of habitat resulting from urbanisation and intensive farming, but also as a result of hunting, poaching and the activities of more than seventy coursing clubs.
Though a work of fiction, I hope this book will contribute to the ongoing debate about the future of the Irish Hare and maybe get people thinking about how, as a species, we treat the other creatures with which we share this beautiful but increasingly endangered planet.
Here's a link to the Amazon page for the novel:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07KK1F53Z/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
In my childhood I read Richard Adams’ classic Watership Down, and was enthralled by it. That was about the adventures of a group of rabbits. For the past two and a half years I’ve worked on a kind of Watership Down for hares. It’s a very different story of course and set in an entirely different time and place.
Time to Stop Running is a fantasy adventure novel for all ages: It tells the story of Tipsy, a hare living on an Irish offshore island who discovers he’s psychic. Normally the island hares can only communicate with each other, but Tipsy can talk to all other species...except humans.
There are no humans living on the island, but the ruins of houses, stone walls, and a monastic settlement remain, reminders of their past presence and serving nicely as shelter for the hares. Otherwise, hares only know of humans from stories and legends passed down to them.
But then, from across the tempestuous ocean the humans return...not to set up home, but as invaders to capture hares. The captives are taken in boats back to that mysterious Big Island that can be seen on clear days from the beach or cliff-top.
Tipsy is summoned to the cave of the Golden Hare, the reclusive spiritual leader of the island hares. He is assigned a mission that will take him into a strange and terrible land, with enemies to face that make the falcon, his main predatory foe, look almost benign by comparison.
Apart from Tipsy and a large cast of minor characters- including a fox, a badger, and a temperamental cat- that populate the novel, there are two principal human characters: Annemarie Cristobel takes up the cause of the Irish Hare after a chance sighting of an incident that leaves her shocked and shaken; and there’s Waxy Bumbleton-Crossbar, Secretary of Ballycrossways Coursing Club. He’s deeply committed to the blood sport and believes there’s only one way to persuade politicians to safeguard his “traditional country pastime.”
In writing this novel, I hope to highlight the plight of the Irish Hare, an animal renowned in song, literature, and folklore whose survival is now threatened on many fronts.
The Irish Hare is a sub-species of the Mountain Hare and is unique to Ireland. It has been around since before the last Ice Age of 10,000 years ago but has been in decline for the past half-century, mainly due to loss of habitat resulting from urbanisation and intensive farming, but also as a result of hunting, poaching and the activities of more than seventy coursing clubs.
Though a work of fiction, I hope this book will contribute to the ongoing debate about the future of the Irish Hare and maybe get people thinking about how, as a species, we treat the other creatures with which we share this beautiful but increasingly endangered planet.
Here's a link to the Amazon page for the novel:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07KK1F53Z/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
