H is for Hawk

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 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/