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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
After reading Macdonald's book "Falcon" I was a bit sceptical, but now I completely understand the hype around this book. What a truly magnificent piece of literature.
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Good book on allure of falconry and grieving her father, but the TH White bits left me a bit cold.
Picked this up in a rush while changing trains, on the basis that it had won an award and the cover was brilliant. Didn't realise it was biographical until I started reading it. It never particularly held my attention, but if the idea of reading about the author's attempts to cope with the death of her father by training a goshawk appeals to you, it is a well-executed book.
'The wild can be human work.'
So finishes an early passage of 'H is for Hawk', Helen MacDonald's breathtaking and heartbreaking memoir of grief and growth in the English countryside. In it, the border between human and wild is examined in a drama between Helen and her hawk Mabel as Helen sets out to tame Mabel as a hunting hawk. Hovering above this drama are the ghosts of Helen's father and the amateur falconer T.H. White ( also the author of 'The Sword in the Stone' and 'The Once and Future King', among others).
It's difficult to explain how good this book is. One would not naturally look to falconry, nor to T.H. White, to explore the nature of grief as it causes humanity to submerge under ancestral wildness, nor would the combination be expected to be so stirring in their portrayal of the brutality of loss, yet MacDonald does exactly this and makes it look, and feel, natural.
That the writing is stunning should itself be enough, but this book is so much more than pretty. I started it expecting a simple, 'Year in Provence' style story of returning to simplicity to appreciate life. MacDonald, however, pushes harder, finding that the further from her grief (and therefore her humanity) she retreats in her pursuit of training Mabel, the less she understands and is understood by the wild. The hawk, the deer, the shrubs, even the landscape itself of the English countryside she travels are shaped by the history of the people who dwelt there for millennia, and continue exist as a product of, rather than in spite of, humanity. In a quiet, understated way, MacDonald applies this logic to the day she is prescribed anti-depressants, and in so doing powerfully affirms the humanity of those with mental health issues requiring medication.
For MacDonald, the true beauty lies not in the wild, but in the humanity that perceives the beauty of the wild, and gives it meaning. A great book.
So finishes an early passage of 'H is for Hawk', Helen MacDonald's breathtaking and heartbreaking memoir of grief and growth in the English countryside. In it, the border between human and wild is examined in a drama between Helen and her hawk Mabel as Helen sets out to tame Mabel as a hunting hawk. Hovering above this drama are the ghosts of Helen's father and the amateur falconer T.H. White ( also the author of 'The Sword in the Stone' and 'The Once and Future King', among others).
It's difficult to explain how good this book is. One would not naturally look to falconry, nor to T.H. White, to explore the nature of grief as it causes humanity to submerge under ancestral wildness, nor would the combination be expected to be so stirring in their portrayal of the brutality of loss, yet MacDonald does exactly this and makes it look, and feel, natural.
That the writing is stunning should itself be enough, but this book is so much more than pretty. I started it expecting a simple, 'Year in Provence' style story of returning to simplicity to appreciate life. MacDonald, however, pushes harder, finding that the further from her grief (and therefore her humanity) she retreats in her pursuit of training Mabel, the less she understands and is understood by the wild. The hawk, the deer, the shrubs, even the landscape itself of the English countryside she travels are shaped by the history of the people who dwelt there for millennia, and continue exist as a product of, rather than in spite of, humanity. In a quiet, understated way, MacDonald applies this logic to the day she is prescribed anti-depressants, and in so doing powerfully affirms the humanity of those with mental health issues requiring medication.
For MacDonald, the true beauty lies not in the wild, but in the humanity that perceives the beauty of the wild, and gives it meaning. A great book.
This is a moving story of a woman who trains a goshawk (a really big hawk) almost in desperation as she tries to come to terms with her father’s sudden death. The prose is raw and beautiful as she describes the fierceness of the hawk and the depths of her grief. Honestly, I didn’t start out liking this book. I have no interest in training a hawk :) and the technical parts were a bit boring, but as the story progressed, I found myself wanting to know if the hawk could help heal her and ease some of her pain.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Non-fiction is definitely what I love reading most but this book expands boundaries of the genre. MacDonald combines nature writing and grief memoir with a guide how to train a hawk and T.H White biography. A truly beautiful read. 📚📚📚#teadingiseverything #hisforhawk #helenmacdonald #nonfiction #naturewriting
A really inconsistent book for me. Sometimes visionary & lucid, sometimes parochial & cliched.
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced