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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
Macdonald's relationship with her goshawk, Mabel, and her own grasp on the scope of her grief after the sudden death of her father is present in this book in ways that are both gentle and stirring. I was given an ease into sorrowful memories and learned along with her about how one can embrace life again rather than escape into wildness.
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
This book walks the line of an account of keeping and working a specific breed of hawk - and falconry as a sport in general - and a memoir on grief and loss. And. It’s wonderfully written. At times deep, sometimes embarrassingly awkward, and reflective.
A wonderful story about a young woman dealing with grief. Helen's descriptions of grief are so spot on and reminded me of feelings I've had but have forgotten over time. She channels her grief by adopting and raising a Goshawk. As she tries to become more wild and become like the hawk she has adopted, she realizes just how human she actually is and what she needs in her grief is community, not isolation in the wild. Anybody who has dealt with the death of a loved one will relate to Helen's struggle.
There were certainly intriguing parts to this book and the author managed to describe things quite vividly, but I wasn't as emotionally invested as I thought I would be. Still - it's an interesting glimpse into what training a bird of prey entails and also an interesting glimpse in the author's grief after losing her father.
Ok so. I tried really hard to like this book, as I know it’s beloved by many friends. But I truly could barely stop myself from throwing it across the room on many occasions. The first chapter is perfect and should be published as a short essay, but after that it was a major uphill slog for me until I couldn’t bear another step. Just incredibly redundant and boring and heavy-handed. I didn’t feel trusted as the reader to read between the lines or pick up on small lovely details. Rather, the details were pushed on me again and again. And again. Sorry, but I gave up on this book for the third time and will not be trying again.
I listened to the audiobook version read by the author which really added to the enjoyment of the book. The story is about how the author used her interest in falconery to overcome the grief of her father's death. She decides to train a goshawk which are known for being aggressive and in the process she heals through identifying with the bird's wild spirit. Its a unique and lovely story.
Macdonald's book delights in part because it defies genre.
The book describes her complex relationship with a goshawk she is training to hunt. She describes the bird's body movements, its hunting grounds, its prey and other aspects of the sport--or rather the art of falconry. However, the book is far more than a nature book. The catalyst for procuring the Hawk is her father's sudden death. She's processing her grief while immersing herself in the world of falconry. From time to time, she shares stories about her father, but more often she describes her grief, the physical and psychological distress.
Despite Macdonald's ability describe wildness to the point where she seems more animal than human at times, she invokes quite a bit of civilization. Even as a child, she read voraciously about falconry. She draws from hobbyist magazines, monographs, and historical records (some dating back hundreds of years). She gestures to symbols for hawks and other birds of prey used in artwork from a variety of time periods and cultures. I was surprised to discover that the most frequently invoked cultural object is the British author.
About a fifth of the book is focused on the life and writings of T. H. White. While Macdonald does discuss his life and career broadly in a few places, for the more part, she does a close reading of White's book _The Goshawk_ (1954). Macdonald read White's book about training a hawk when she was a school-aged girl. After she loses her father and gains a goshawk of her own, she rereads _The Goshawk_ with great care, noting White's misguided techniques and describing possible deep psychological motivations for his goal, methods and reactions to the act of training his goshawk.
One of the most powerful aspects of the book is the complex dialectic Macdonald describes between nature and civilization, symbolized most pointedly in the relationship between hawk and falconer. Does the bird become more human when trained? Does the human become more wild? Can a human being observe nature without the filter of civilization? Or are people doomed to always overlay templates from art, history, literature, culture, or even personal psychological needs--rending it impossible to live purely in a state of nature?
These are interesting questions, ones that she addresses overtly while discussing White but also questions she poses to herself and her relationship with her goshawk. Hint: there are no easy answers to the question of how nature and civilization creates a commerce of action and meaning.
Like other reviewers, I did at times worry about Macdonald's psychological state. She describes several moments of extreme distress--she withdraws from others, eats poorly, sleeps little, falls into financial difficulty, pushes herself too far while going on long hunts or physically challenging hunts. She falls into fuzzy thinking and antisocial behavior. However, I never grew too concerned. Afterall, I was holding her finished book in my hand the entire time. And it takes a lot of discipline and focus to produce a book. I had concrete evidence that she pulled through.
The writing style itself is evidence of strength and resilience. Macdonald has a powerful imagination and a lyric writing style. She demonstrates a great deal of intrapersonal intelligence (see Howard Gardner). Because she can observe her own thoughts and feelings with such intensity and nuance, I at times felt as though her grief was magnified. She was able to dramatize and explain in painstacking detail her thoughts and feelings. This might have increased her own suffering, but her ability to verbalize her grief process will certainly serve to guide and comfort other bereft people. It can also help readers offer compassion to those who are grieving.
Even though she does not describe her own writing process, I kept imagining her reclusive time being filled in part with faithful journal keeping. Her time with the goshawk is so thoroughly described, she much have been writing frequently.
So, yes, the hawk helped her process her grief, but the act of writing itself keeps her teathered to the world, helped her hold on to the sanity required for forming words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. In writing this book, she was able to exert control over a world that turned to chaos when her dad died. And out of that chaos, she created something beautiful and powerful to offer the world.
The book describes her complex relationship with a goshawk she is training to hunt. She describes the bird's body movements, its hunting grounds, its prey and other aspects of the sport--or rather the art of falconry. However, the book is far more than a nature book. The catalyst for procuring the Hawk is her father's sudden death. She's processing her grief while immersing herself in the world of falconry. From time to time, she shares stories about her father, but more often she describes her grief, the physical and psychological distress.
Despite Macdonald's ability describe wildness to the point where she seems more animal than human at times, she invokes quite a bit of civilization. Even as a child, she read voraciously about falconry. She draws from hobbyist magazines, monographs, and historical records (some dating back hundreds of years). She gestures to symbols for hawks and other birds of prey used in artwork from a variety of time periods and cultures. I was surprised to discover that the most frequently invoked cultural object is the British author.
About a fifth of the book is focused on the life and writings of T. H. White. While Macdonald does discuss his life and career broadly in a few places, for the more part, she does a close reading of White's book _The Goshawk_ (1954). Macdonald read White's book about training a hawk when she was a school-aged girl. After she loses her father and gains a goshawk of her own, she rereads _The Goshawk_ with great care, noting White's misguided techniques and describing possible deep psychological motivations for his goal, methods and reactions to the act of training his goshawk.
One of the most powerful aspects of the book is the complex dialectic Macdonald describes between nature and civilization, symbolized most pointedly in the relationship between hawk and falconer. Does the bird become more human when trained? Does the human become more wild? Can a human being observe nature without the filter of civilization? Or are people doomed to always overlay templates from art, history, literature, culture, or even personal psychological needs--rending it impossible to live purely in a state of nature?
These are interesting questions, ones that she addresses overtly while discussing White but also questions she poses to herself and her relationship with her goshawk. Hint: there are no easy answers to the question of how nature and civilization creates a commerce of action and meaning.
Like other reviewers, I did at times worry about Macdonald's psychological state. She describes several moments of extreme distress--she withdraws from others, eats poorly, sleeps little, falls into financial difficulty, pushes herself too far while going on long hunts or physically challenging hunts. She falls into fuzzy thinking and antisocial behavior. However, I never grew too concerned. Afterall, I was holding her finished book in my hand the entire time. And it takes a lot of discipline and focus to produce a book. I had concrete evidence that she pulled through.
The writing style itself is evidence of strength and resilience. Macdonald has a powerful imagination and a lyric writing style. She demonstrates a great deal of intrapersonal intelligence (see Howard Gardner). Because she can observe her own thoughts and feelings with such intensity and nuance, I at times felt as though her grief was magnified. She was able to dramatize and explain in painstacking detail her thoughts and feelings. This might have increased her own suffering, but her ability to verbalize her grief process will certainly serve to guide and comfort other bereft people. It can also help readers offer compassion to those who are grieving.
Even though she does not describe her own writing process, I kept imagining her reclusive time being filled in part with faithful journal keeping. Her time with the goshawk is so thoroughly described, she much have been writing frequently.
So, yes, the hawk helped her process her grief, but the act of writing itself keeps her teathered to the world, helped her hold on to the sanity required for forming words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. In writing this book, she was able to exert control over a world that turned to chaos when her dad died. And out of that chaos, she created something beautiful and powerful to offer the world.
She is a very talented writer whose story I wasn’t interested in. Idk, maybe I’m callous but the relationship between the hawk and the author interested me less than that of some of the historic people she referenced, and we also didn’t learn all that much about her father, which caused a bit of a disconnect for me.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I grabbed the audio book of this have heard the title a few times and thinking it was a popular nature book. i didn't read the description to see that grief is a major subject, so I wasn't expecting that. but it was good. i am now curious about T. H. White and considering reading his biography.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Grief, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Mental illness, Blood
Minor: Pedophilia, Xenophobia