H is for Hawk: The Sunday Times bestseller and Costa and Samuel Johnson Prize Winner

by Helen Macdonald

Discover the number one bestselling phenomenon that is a powerful and profound mediation on grief expressed through the trials of training a goshawk.

**WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR**
** WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION**

As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

H is for Hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. This is a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.

**SELECTED BY CARIAD LLOYD ON BBC TWO'S BETWEEN THE COVERS**

'This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration' Andrew Motion

'It just sings. I couldn't stop reading' Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

'Dazzling... Deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love and intelligence' Financial Times

• ISBN10: 0099575450
• ISBN13: 9780099575450
• Publish Date: 26 February 2015 (first published 31 July 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Sometimes books come along at the perfect time and are thus possibly made better than they otherwise would have been; circumstances lifting them up and giving them more resonance.

This isn't that.

This book is brilliantly written. The prose is subtle and perfect. I wish I were more adept at writing to do justice to a review.

I frankly resisted reading this book for a month or more because I am not generally fond of reality/autobio writing. I've never been up close and personal with falconry (and have always thought it and the sportspeople who practise it were terrifying and the sport melancholy in about equal measure).

I came in through the door marked T.H. White. I've been a squeeing fangirl since I was very young.

However you come to read this book, do read it.

Best book I've read this year.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

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; http://literary-exploration.com/2015/06/28/h-is-for-hawk-by-helen-macdonald/