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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
This is an exceptionally well-crafted memoir and a pleasure to read. Macdonald describes the inner landscape by her observation of exteriors. This would be a great place to start for new readers of memoir. Those trying to write memoir, like me, will take a lot of notes.
As a child, I wished that I had a peregrine falcon like the boy in My Side of the Mountain. So I’m the target audience for a memoir on training a hawk. There’s also grief and T.H White.
I wouldn’t label this as one of the best books of the 21st century, but it did convince me I don’t have the patience for falconry.
I wouldn’t label this as one of the best books of the 21st century, but it did convince me I don’t have the patience for falconry.
A thoughtful, beautiful exploration of wildness and grief.
I read this book as part of my studies and am so glad I was “forced” into reading it as it is not my usual genre and not a book I would have chosen, but oh what I would have missed if I had never read it. Helen McDonald is a falconer who wrote about training a goshawk, Mabel, as a way of processing the grief following the sudden and unexpected death of her father. I knew nothing about falconry and had never heard of a goshawk so I have learnt some new things which enrich my life, but her use of language and phrase is wonderful and there are some priceless gems of language in the book which make it also wonderful. I see why it won prizes!
Da-am I was not expecting that. This books bizarre combination of English literature analysis, memoir and natural history non-fiction makes it really unique and it definitely drew me in. I also found the depiction of grief, which was so intense and raw, really engaging. Like any book that rotates focus between chapters there’s some you look forward to more than others but they were very well blended together. Keen to see what she’s written about in vesper heights.
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
maybe my favorite book of all time
sad
slow-paced
Have recently read and enjoyed Raising Hare so I thought I'd give this a try, but sadly it was not for me. All I can say is it was tedious and made me feel like I was in danger of getting a headache every time I started reading it.
This is one of those books that made a lot of "things you should read from 2015" lists. It's well written, but wasn't really my cup of tea. I enjoyed what she had to say about falconry, and the portrayal of the year of the author's life after the death of her father was well done and interesting, but trying to parallel it with a depiction of T.S. White's (yes, the guy who wrote The Once and Future King, popularizing the King Arthur story) time training his own Goshawk just didn't work for me. Apparently White was quite the messed up guy and knew basically nothing about how to train a hawk, so the sections of the book about him are basically the author cringing at everything he did or everyone being weirded out by White's unfortunate sexual hangups.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Rating: No idea. 🤷🏻
When the author's father died suddenly, Macdonald decided to deal with her grief by eschewing human company and, in her semi-isolation, training a species of hawk with a notorious reputation for being difficult - a Eurasian goshawk, named Mabel. The book covers the journey from obtaining Mabel, to training the goshawk to fly and hunt without a leash, and ends with Mable going on a spring vacation in an aviary while she molts. I got the impression that the whole training exercise will have to be repeated once all Mabel's feathers grow back, but the book never mentions what happens afterwards.
I felt the narrative to be somewhat disjointed and not always clear when bouncing around different thoughts/events. This also isn't just a memoir of the year Macdonald spent training her goshawk and musing on nature. Macdonald's reminiscings are intertwined with a sort of shadow biography of T.H. White, author of the Arthurian saga "The Once and Future King", but also author of a non-fiction book titled Goshawk, which describes White's horribly inept attempts (and ultimate failure) at training a goshawk he so unoriginally named Gos. While Macdonald is training Mabel, several decades in the past, White is "training" Gos. This concurrent comparison of falconry is interspersed with biographical passages of White's life, centering around themes of parental abuse, being an outsider, his sexual orientation, and feelings aroused by his goshawk. Sometimes these sections felt a bit like spying on a stranger's psychology consultation.
I found the passages describing White's relationship with Gos rage inducing! This man had no business even attempting falconry. He didn't know what he was doing, didn't consult with experts, tried to use outdated techniques, did whatever the hell his warped psyche felt was appropriate at the time, and was ultimately downright cruel to this poor bird. I am not a fan of falconry as a sport and keeping birds captive in general, but after reading certain passages relating to Gos, I would quite happily have burned any T.H. White books in the house.*
At the end of the book, I felt I learned more about T.H. White (whose books I've never read and who doesn't particularly interest me), than I did about Mabel or Helen Macdonald. There also wasn't that much nature writing, despite that label on the back of the book. However, the prose is evocative, sometimes lyrical. There are beautiful passages where you can taste and smell the scenery, where you can feel the wind in your feathers. The subject matter is a bit depressing, but I did learn new things about goshawks and falconry, and hopefully Mabel was at least content from a hawk perspective.
NOTE: Helen Macdonald's documentary on training Mabel's successor and following a wild goshawk family - H is for Hawk: A New Chapter - can be found HERE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkusI49gwiw
*I don't have any, so no books were set alight on this occasion.
When the author's father died suddenly, Macdonald decided to deal with her grief by eschewing human company and, in her semi-isolation, training a species of hawk with a notorious reputation for being difficult - a Eurasian goshawk, named Mabel. The book covers the journey from obtaining Mabel, to training the goshawk to fly and hunt without a leash, and ends with Mable going on a spring vacation in an aviary while she molts. I got the impression that the whole training exercise will have to be repeated once all Mabel's feathers grow back, but the book never mentions what happens afterwards.
I felt the narrative to be somewhat disjointed and not always clear when bouncing around different thoughts/events. This also isn't just a memoir of the year Macdonald spent training her goshawk and musing on nature. Macdonald's reminiscings are intertwined with a sort of shadow biography of T.H. White, author of the Arthurian saga "The Once and Future King", but also author of a non-fiction book titled Goshawk, which describes White's horribly inept attempts (and ultimate failure) at training a goshawk he so unoriginally named Gos. While Macdonald is training Mabel, several decades in the past, White is "training" Gos. This concurrent comparison of falconry is interspersed with biographical passages of White's life, centering around themes of parental abuse, being an outsider, his sexual orientation, and feelings aroused by his goshawk. Sometimes these sections felt a bit like spying on a stranger's psychology consultation.
I found the passages describing White's relationship with Gos rage inducing! This man had no business even attempting falconry. He didn't know what he was doing, didn't consult with experts, tried to use outdated techniques, did whatever the hell his warped psyche felt was appropriate at the time, and was ultimately downright cruel to this poor bird. I am not a fan of falconry as a sport and keeping birds captive in general, but after reading certain passages relating to Gos, I would quite happily have burned any T.H. White books in the house.*
At the end of the book, I felt I learned more about T.H. White (whose books I've never read and who doesn't particularly interest me), than I did about Mabel or Helen Macdonald. There also wasn't that much nature writing, despite that label on the back of the book. However, the prose is evocative, sometimes lyrical. There are beautiful passages where you can taste and smell the scenery, where you can feel the wind in your feathers. The subject matter is a bit depressing, but I did learn new things about goshawks and falconry, and hopefully Mabel was at least content from a hawk perspective.
NOTE: Helen Macdonald's documentary on training Mabel's successor and following a wild goshawk family - H is for Hawk: A New Chapter - can be found HERE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkusI49gwiw
*I don't have any, so no books were set alight on this occasion.