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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
early on in h is for hawk helen macdonald writes about how she inherited a penchant for watching from her father, looking at the world from afar to try and understand it, to inhabit it, to distance oneself from it, to escape from something else.
in many ways this book feels like one prolonged act of critical watching—a wandering, probing gaze that sweeps across macdonald’s own life, her grief, across her intimate process of training her hawk, across the archive and imagined life of t.h. white, the modern author of arthurian legend and someone who documented a similarly transformative process of hawking in a novel which macdonald first encounters in her youth. This book is her response aimed back in time to White and his goshawk; partly a memoir, partly a piece of nature writing on hawking, partly a biography, partly a historical essay, macdonald unravels and unpacks the threads of myth and history that connect her and white and their relationship to the wilderness and hawks, how all of it is intertwined in an english history of colonisation, war, and the shaping violences of gender and race. It’s at times fragmented, erratic in its focus, and yet it’s that effort to weave together all these disparately observed things that most movingly captures the shape of macdonald’s grief. she begins the book looking for an escape in all these things—in her hawk, in the life of t.h. white—but finally what she arrives back toward in her inhabitance of their difference is herself. when she does, in the ending pages of the book, it’s bittersweet and cathartic.
It’s odd, strange, and uniquely beautiful. If it comes apart slightly at the seams at times, it’s perhaps because of where macdonald stops her wandering—at the fringes of considering her position and perhaps even her complicity, of her class and whiteness, in the same histories that disturb and haunt her, but nonetheless that fraught kind of disturbance is there for the reader to look at critically, laid bare honestly and without any guises.
When I first heard about this book almost ten years ago I was deeply drawn to its premise. When I bought it in a bookstore I found it in the midst of other nature writing titles and manuals about animals. It’s special in a way that I don’t think I’ve found before, in that it manages to feel both personal and academic without one clouding the other. This is the kind of writing that I wish I could make.
in many ways this book feels like one prolonged act of critical watching—a wandering, probing gaze that sweeps across macdonald’s own life, her grief, across her intimate process of training her hawk, across the archive and imagined life of t.h. white, the modern author of arthurian legend and someone who documented a similarly transformative process of hawking in a novel which macdonald first encounters in her youth. This book is her response aimed back in time to White and his goshawk; partly a memoir, partly a piece of nature writing on hawking, partly a biography, partly a historical essay, macdonald unravels and unpacks the threads of myth and history that connect her and white and their relationship to the wilderness and hawks, how all of it is intertwined in an english history of colonisation, war, and the shaping violences of gender and race. It’s at times fragmented, erratic in its focus, and yet it’s that effort to weave together all these disparately observed things that most movingly captures the shape of macdonald’s grief. she begins the book looking for an escape in all these things—in her hawk, in the life of t.h. white—but finally what she arrives back toward in her inhabitance of their difference is herself. when she does, in the ending pages of the book, it’s bittersweet and cathartic.
It’s odd, strange, and uniquely beautiful. If it comes apart slightly at the seams at times, it’s perhaps because of where macdonald stops her wandering—at the fringes of considering her position and perhaps even her complicity, of her class and whiteness, in the same histories that disturb and haunt her, but nonetheless that fraught kind of disturbance is there for the reader to look at critically, laid bare honestly and without any guises.
When I first heard about this book almost ten years ago I was deeply drawn to its premise. When I bought it in a bookstore I found it in the midst of other nature writing titles and manuals about animals. It’s special in a way that I don’t think I’ve found before, in that it manages to feel both personal and academic without one clouding the other. This is the kind of writing that I wish I could make.
I did enjoy most of this book - it's a lovely story - but found myself drifting off a bit in places where the authors wanders off into different directions. Worth a read though.
This was a poetic and magnificent mix of literary talent, insight into the natural world, vulnerability, and introspection. I was surprised to find myself so engaged in a story about a bird, but Macdonald expertly weaves in history, literature, and personal experience to make this one of the best memoirs I've ever read.
This came very highly recommended by several people, so I wish I had liked it more so as not to disappoint! The writing is vivid and gripping and it's an interesting juxtaposition of stories, but both the plot and structure jumped around a great deal and made it difficult for me to stay focused. Would still recommend to anyone with interest in its main subjects (grief, nature, hawks!), but it wasn't my favorite.
This book is a thing of impeccable beauty and it will stay with me forever.
Definitely not a #sundayquickreads. This is a grief memoir with a thick, textured jacquard fabric that forces you to slow down and pay attention to its complex weave.
Helen's father has just died, and in floundering, helpless, escapist grief, she decides to retreat from people and train a wild goshawk, whom she names Mabel.
She is, somewhat consciously, following in the footsteps of T.H.White, who also fled many of his responsibilities and holed up in a cottage to train a goshawk, an experience about which he also wrote a book. Helen's reflections on the similarities and differences in their experiences are surprisingly profound, as is the depth of her expressiveness about Mabel's attitudes, postures, desires, and behaviors. Even more surprising is how emotional all of these observations become in the context of Helens grief.
Helen's writing is also astonishingly rich, even lush at times, yet never baroque or overbearing. The descriptions of the English countryside are effortlessly detailed and evocative, and the renderings of Mabel's hunting efforts are bloodier but no less striking.
This is a book that will stick with me for a long time. It's slow-moving, so those looking for a fast and exciting plot will want to look elsewhere, but the rewards for patience are tremendous.
Helen's father has just died, and in floundering, helpless, escapist grief, she decides to retreat from people and train a wild goshawk, whom she names Mabel.
She is, somewhat consciously, following in the footsteps of T.H.White, who also fled many of his responsibilities and holed up in a cottage to train a goshawk, an experience about which he also wrote a book. Helen's reflections on the similarities and differences in their experiences are surprisingly profound, as is the depth of her expressiveness about Mabel's attitudes, postures, desires, and behaviors. Even more surprising is how emotional all of these observations become in the context of Helens grief.
Helen's writing is also astonishingly rich, even lush at times, yet never baroque or overbearing. The descriptions of the English countryside are effortlessly detailed and evocative, and the renderings of Mabel's hunting efforts are bloodier but no less striking.
This is a book that will stick with me for a long time. It's slow-moving, so those looking for a fast and exciting plot will want to look elsewhere, but the rewards for patience are tremendous.
What a lovely and completely original book. Good for anyone struggling with grief.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
An absolutely beautiful book, which weaves together the author’s own journeys with grief, with her hawk, and with history— grief and hawks of times past. The prose is so lovely, and I found myself tearing up at many parts. This story is a celebration of wildness and all it offers to us, but also of humanity and human nature. I worried it would be slow at parts, which is usually the case for memoirs, but I found myself struggling to put the book down. :-)