hardcover, 300 pages
Published Sept. 12, 2014 by Jonathan Cape.
When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer, Helen had never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk, but in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity and changed her life.
Did not expect bonus insight into the life of the author of "The Once and Future King." Now want to reread that with knowledge that the author was a closeted gay man.
An extraordinary book, filled with poetry from the first page. Helen Macdonald seamlessly links a chain of things that seem unconnected: her grief over her father's death, training a goshawk, the strange life of the author TH White, perspectives on nature and nationalism, and magic.
Aside from the electric storytelling, the prose throughout is poetic and poignant. The links to disparate things are seamless. And the linked processes of grief are explored delicately right to the end. Even when I don't agree with some of Macdonald's perspectives, I am very grateful to her for sharing this journey as such a literary wonder.
What a rollercoaster of a read this was, every up and down experienced by Macdonald was also experienced by this reader, the further into madness she went the more intense I felt towards this bird, each time the bird flew I found my heart also about to explode with joy. When I was younger I developed an obsession with Osprey’s I wanted one more than anything else, I could easily imagine myself training it and popping to the shops with it on my fist….my parents got me two canaries instead which were a bugger to train to hunt. Before starting this book I was in two minds about whether I would like it, I love going to the local Hawk Conservancy (coincidentally this was where I purchased this book) and being able to see these beautiful birds up close but at the same time I feel guilty that I get …
What a rollercoaster of a read this was, every up and down experienced by Macdonald was also experienced by this reader, the further into madness she went the more intense I felt towards this bird, each time the bird flew I found my heart also about to explode with joy. When I was younger I developed an obsession with Osprey’s I wanted one more than anything else, I could easily imagine myself training it and popping to the shops with it on my fist….my parents got me two canaries instead which were a bugger to train to hunt. Before starting this book I was in two minds about whether I would like it, I love going to the local Hawk Conservancy (coincidentally this was where I purchased this book) and being able to see these beautiful birds up close but at the same time I feel guilty that I get this happiness at the expense of their freedom.
This book consists of three parts, the first part is about a woman who has lost her father and is dealing with the grief, next there is the same woman buying a Goshawk and training it and finally there is the man who inspired her, T. H. White in which we find out all about his life and his experiences with training his hawk. Reading about Macdonald’s father and how his death almost broke her was heart-breaking but her words about this man were wonderful and I loved reading about him, reading about the Goshawk (named Mabel) was mesmerising, the writing is so powerful the bird almost comes alive on the page. I found the parts about White hard going, this man was doing it all wrong and I had no real interest in him, I just wanted to get past those pages and get back to Mabel to see how she was getting on. But as the bond between Macdonald and Mabel started to grow and after Mabel starts to fly I found myself drawn more towards White, everything about him was so tragic and he was incredibly self destructive, the man may have had no idea about training his hawk but you soon realise it was his mistakes that has taught us so much about falconry today.
Macdonald’s love and attachment to Mabel is intense, her emotions feel so raw and I got quite emotional reading as she started to become feral, pulling away from the community and losing herself in the hawk. Mabel herself is a thing of beauty and seeing just how free she actually is made me feel much better about those trips to the Hawk Conservancy. Once you let the bird fly it is all up to her whether the bond with the human is more powerful than the lure of flying free and doing what she was born to be, any time she is released could be the day she says “see ya laterz”. A lot of these books try to show the animal’s human side but here that fails, the bird’s identity is just too strong and in fact it is the human that start’s to show their animal side…I could image myself running a mile if Macdonald was to burst through a hedge covered in blood chasing a rabbit out into the open.
This book was so good, one that will stick with me for a long time and one that will always come to mind each time I see a bird of prey. 100% recommend giving this one a go.
Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/03/28/h-is-for-hawk-by-helen-macdonald/
Helen Macdonald's prose is a lovely experience. This is an intimate memoir of grief, solitude, and recovery. Also, it is a fascinating look at goshawks and her relationship with one in particular. She expresses her thoughts, feelings, and mental associations with singular and astonishing beauty. History, magic, and falconry-- that is how I will remember this book.
There is much to marvel at here, and I recommend it highly.
Didn't mind the mentions of White but did find it weird that every single chapter it seemed touched on him, would've honestly preferred more focus on the hawk or having just one chapter titled 'White'. Actually, I would have preferred sharper focus on the hawk in general (often it seemed like it was about the emotions the hawk inspired, like the terror it might just fly away, but this might be an odd preference of mine as I know many people might prefer reading about the human emotion bit), more details like the one where she realized the hawk liked to play and wondering if anyone else had ever played with their hawk before.
If you have a lazy day at the library it's not a bad choice at all to pick up and browse through.
Ich wollte das Buch trotz mehrfacher Empfehlungen nicht lesen, es klang so lahm nach "Frau bewältigt ihre Trauer durch bla", aber es ist einfach ein sehr gutes Sachbuch. Ohne Eitelkeit, ohne "haha wie lustig, was ich alles nicht weiß über dieses exotische neue Thema", Kompetenz beim Greifvogelthema und bei seiner Darlegung.
Not my kind of book.
First, it’s a memoir. I’d thought it was fiction, which is my preferred genre these days. And it’s by a female college professor in England named Helen Macdonald who gets a goshawk. I’m not fond of academics, am not an Anglophile and I know nothing about hawks except that they have keen vision and will eat your kittens if you’re not careful.
Then there was this first sentence:
Forty-five minutes north-east of Cambridge is a landscape I’ve come to love very much indeed.
Indeed? What is she, Beatrix Potter? My long-lost English grandmother? Am I supposed to read this book by the fire in a cozy cottage with a thatched roof while sipping a cup of tea? Also, I have no idea where Cambridge is, much less what’s forty-five minutes northeast of it.
I’m not someone who gives up on books that fast, though, so …
Not my kind of book.
First, it’s a memoir. I’d thought it was fiction, which is my preferred genre these days. And it’s by a female college professor in England named Helen Macdonald who gets a goshawk. I’m not fond of academics, am not an Anglophile and I know nothing about hawks except that they have keen vision and will eat your kittens if you’re not careful.
Then there was this first sentence:
Forty-five minutes north-east of Cambridge is a landscape I’ve come to love very much indeed.
Indeed? What is she, Beatrix Potter? My long-lost English grandmother? Am I supposed to read this book by the fire in a cozy cottage with a thatched roof while sipping a cup of tea? Also, I have no idea where Cambridge is, much less what’s forty-five minutes northeast of it.
I’m not someone who gives up on books that fast, though, so I continued reading. It turns out H is for Hawk one of the best books I’ve read in years. Although Macdonald is an academic she’s also a poet, and her writing goes places ordinary prose doesn’t. You can feel the chill of the countryside in early spring, see the hawk as she swoops for prey, and commiserate with Macdonald as she copes with her father’s recent sudden death.
I’d almost recommend reading this book on an e-reader because of their built-in dictionaries. I had a total shoulder replacement recently and my only dictionaries are big ones so I didn’t look up the many unfamiliar (yet perfectly apt) words Macdonald used, which weren’t just confined to hawk-related ones like accipitrine.
It pays to be alert when reading this because Macdonald is one of the wisest writers I’ve read lately. If you just breeze along reading it for the hawk stuff, you could miss paragraphs like this one:
There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are.
Beautifully written, but I had absolutely no interest in the subject matter. Surprisingly disappointing.
Becomes increasingly meaningful when your father dies halfway through finishing the book. Docked one star because of a sneaking suspicion the book killed my father as some form of cosmic irony.
An account of personal loss, falconry with a Goshawk, and an insightful exploration of T.H.White and his book, The Goshawk. I found White's book confusing, until I read this one.
Helen Macdonald has always had a fascination with birds, since a young age she was determined to become a falconer. She would read books on the topic; one book in particular had stuck with her, The Goshawk by T. H. White. When Helen lost her father, grief struck her in a big way, and soon her obsession in training her own goshawk was her own way out. H is for Hawk is a memoir on both dealing with grief and obsession.
I heard so much about this book and when it was assigned for book club, I was excited. Although in the back of my mind, my thoughts on falconry were sceptical. I find falconry to be a barbaric and cruel practice that is no longer required within our culture. To starve and cage a raptor for your own amusement seems unnecessary. With these thoughts going into the book, I …
Helen Macdonald has always had a fascination with birds, since a young age she was determined to become a falconer. She would read books on the topic; one book in particular had stuck with her, The Goshawk by T. H. White. When Helen lost her father, grief struck her in a big way, and soon her obsession in training her own goshawk was her own way out. H is for Hawk is a memoir on both dealing with grief and obsession.
I heard so much about this book and when it was assigned for book club, I was excited. Although in the back of my mind, my thoughts on falconry were sceptical. I find falconry to be a barbaric and cruel practice that is no longer required within our culture. To starve and cage a raptor for your own amusement seems unnecessary. With these thoughts going into the book, I had a hard time appreciating the memoir.
I know Helen Macdonald repeatedly stated that she was not starving the goshawk, I still thought of it as a cruel practice. I learned a lot about falconry, some stuff was interesting but there was so much information to process. The book never changed my feelings towards falconry, only cemented them and that become my fundamental problem with H is for Hawk. I enjoyed the parts about The Goshawk and I love reading memoirs about reading books but there was not enough there to hold my interest.
I thought I would try annotating this book, it is a habit that I want to start and thought it would be fun. However I did have to stop with the annotation, as I started to feel like Helen Macdonald was over playing her grief just to make the story more interesting. I did not want to be the heartless person that criticises the author’s emotions, especially when it comes to grief. So I quickly abandoned my annotations and I continued to try to get into the habit.
While H is for Hawk has some wonderful writing, I had a very difficult time enjoying this book. I wanted Helen Macdonald to return to talking about The Goshawk through out the entire memoir. I am interested in seeing what Macdonald will do next, she certainly can right. I hope her next book, whatever that may be, will be something I can get behind.
This review originally appeared on my blog; literary-exploration.com/2015/06/28/h-is-for-hawk-by-helen-macdonald/
