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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
Macdonald wrote this book after the death of her father. It is is a chronicle of her coming to terms with his death; as with many people, the death of a parent prompts her to reexamine who she is. Unlike most people, Macdonald does this by deciding to train a goshawk. She is already an experienced and skilled trainer of raptors, but a goshawk is bigger and (at least by reputation) much more difficult to train than the other birds she has flown.
So this is also a chronicle of "training a person who is not human". It is the best, most articulate description I have ever read of the bond that exists between a human trainer and an animal trainee. Birds are certainly different than horses, but it seems there is much overlap in the relationship that develops between the hawker and the bird and between a rider and a horse, even though hawks are for killing and horses are prey animals. Macdonald is a skilled trainer who knows that in working with an animal, you become that animal in a very real, sometimes surprising, sometimes worrying way. The language that flows between the human person and the animal person is intimate, strange and very, very powerful.
The third aspect of this book is a close examination of T.H. White's "The Goshawk". T.H.White was a complex man and did not have the trainer skills that Macdonald possesses, but she is drawn to the book as a sort of bleak accompaniment to her grief and her experience with her own goshawk. This is my least favorite part of the book, but at the end, it makes such sense that she included it.
I loved this book so much I read it and then listened to it (masterfully narrated by the author) as well. It is a masterpiece of enlightenment about grief, personhood, literature and the natural world.
So this is also a chronicle of "training a person who is not human". It is the best, most articulate description I have ever read of the bond that exists between a human trainer and an animal trainee. Birds are certainly different than horses, but it seems there is much overlap in the relationship that develops between the hawker and the bird and between a rider and a horse, even though hawks are for killing and horses are prey animals. Macdonald is a skilled trainer who knows that in working with an animal, you become that animal in a very real, sometimes surprising, sometimes worrying way. The language that flows between the human person and the animal person is intimate, strange and very, very powerful.
The third aspect of this book is a close examination of T.H. White's "The Goshawk". T.H.White was a complex man and did not have the trainer skills that Macdonald possesses, but she is drawn to the book as a sort of bleak accompaniment to her grief and her experience with her own goshawk. This is my least favorite part of the book, but at the end, it makes such sense that she included it.
I loved this book so much I read it and then listened to it (masterfully narrated by the author) as well. It is a masterpiece of enlightenment about grief, personhood, literature and the natural world.
started off string but started losing interest pretty quickly and the pacing doesn't help
"We carry the lives we've imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost."
"I learned that hardening the heart was not the same as not caring. The rabbit was always important."
"There was no patience in my waiting, but time had passed all the same, and worked its careful magic."
A beautifully written story of grief and trying to escape life through wildness. I could have done without all the stories about White, the author and falconer, but deeply appreciated her story of her depression, and the moment when you can find a shape to your grief, when it is no longer a giant, unimaginable presence that you can't seem to shake.
"I learned that hardening the heart was not the same as not caring. The rabbit was always important."
"There was no patience in my waiting, but time had passed all the same, and worked its careful magic."
A beautifully written story of grief and trying to escape life through wildness. I could have done without all the stories about White, the author and falconer, but deeply appreciated her story of her depression, and the moment when you can find a shape to your grief, when it is no longer a giant, unimaginable presence that you can't seem to shake.
Beautifully written, heartbreaking, and actually very interesting!
Listening to an audiobook read by the author feels like a return to oral history, and I love it.
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Often confuses dourness and darkness for profundity. Often finds profundity in unlikely places. If you've ever mourned, you'll find something here that is wise and beautiful.
Beautiful prose about grief, wildness, and community. Reading this book inspired much introspection, resulting in a slower read (in a good way).
As many good things as I had heard about this book, it really didn't click with me. The premise seemed interesting to me--it is the author's memoir of training a hawk as a sort of response to her father's death, intertwined with her reading of T.H. White's own memoir on his (fairly unsuccessful) experience of training a hawk. But I didn't feel like I connected with either the author or her writing style. Perhaps I would have felt more of a connection if I had gone through a similar personal experience. Honestly, even though I thought it would be interesting to read about the falconry part, that ended up seeming weird to me too--I guess I can understand what Macdonald likes about it, but it didn't seem at all appealing. The stuff about T.H. White was the most interesting. I started out liking Macdonald's writing style, but ended up feeling tired of it. She is not cliched and comes up with some inventive turns of phrase, but she uses figurative language to a point that felt overwritten to me. She also does a fair amount of direct commentary ("I had learned from her that..."), which I didn't like.
Altogether, it felt like a book that was almost tailor-made to be at the top of popular-intellectual best books lists. I don't mean to imply at all that it was specifically written to that end. But the combination of personal tragedy, intellectual history, and quirky hobby is definitely NYT reviewer catnip. I might have liked the book better without all the hype around it, but without the hype, I don't think I would have picked it up in the first place.
Altogether, it felt like a book that was almost tailor-made to be at the top of popular-intellectual best books lists. I don't mean to imply at all that it was specifically written to that end. But the combination of personal tragedy, intellectual history, and quirky hobby is definitely NYT reviewer catnip. I might have liked the book better without all the hype around it, but without the hype, I don't think I would have picked it up in the first place.
I really enjoyed the first half of this book and then felt like I had learned as much as I wanted to about falconry and T.H. White who may really be the subject of this book. I kept expecting the book to expand its themes beyond the day-to-day (or minute-to-minute as it sometimes felt) of hawk life but it's really mostly about a woman and her bird.