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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
slow-paced
This was a very interesting and thought provoking book.
The author is dealing with the death of her father by raising a hawk. At times this is used as an escape to the wilderness from civilization, a distraction, and even a comforting friend.
You'll learn a lot about falconry (if you don't know it already at least); however, the core of the book was a commentary on the need for a little wilderness in our lives - at least that's the message I got. It also emphasizes how our state of mind can shape the way the wilderness influences our perception. It's a feedback loop with nature drawing on our thoughts and amplifying them or providing a specific escape from them. That same escape can be uncomfortable when you're in a different mind set.
This was easily one of my favorite reads of the year.
The author is dealing with the death of her father by raising a hawk. At times this is used as an escape to the wilderness from civilization, a distraction, and even a comforting friend.
You'll learn a lot about falconry (if you don't know it already at least); however, the core of the book was a commentary on the need for a little wilderness in our lives - at least that's the message I got. It also emphasizes how our state of mind can shape the way the wilderness influences our perception. It's a feedback loop with nature drawing on our thoughts and amplifying them or providing a specific escape from them. That same escape can be uncomfortable when you're in a different mind set.
This was easily one of my favorite reads of the year.
Mostly I enjoyed this, although sometimes I felt impatient with the nature descriptions. Of course there is a lot of walking outdoors with the hawk, running across fields and meadows, diving through hedges, and even some mercy killings — but as someone for whom the name of a bird or a tree conjures up nothing because I don't know them, I was on the verge of losing interest now and then.
I knew this was the story of a woman training a goshawk, and the cover and every review mentions that her father had recently died, so her process of grief is mingled with the experience of getting to know her new hawk. There's another interesting layer too — the author has read T. H. White's book The Goshawk many, many times, starting when she was a child. She weaves his story into her own, sometimes comparing but more often offering it as a counterpoint, as he was completely inexperienced with falconry, and she has trained many birds before this (but never a goshawk). Even beyond that, she's been a fan of White's famous books about the life of King Arthur, and so she weaves bits of the life of Merlyn and the adventures of Arthur the boy into her tale of coming to grips with loss and moving forward in life. She also lets us get to know her father a little, but she never comes close to making this a story about him.
I liked learning about training hawks. Not that it makes me want to take it up as a hobby — just the killing of rabbits makes that impossible for me — but it gave me an appreciation for the allure and the long history and all the special equipment (who knew there was a special hawking vest with a plastic-lined pocket in the back for a whole dead pheasant?), as well as the subtle ways this goshawk was so different from the other birds the author has trained.
I would not gush and rave about this book as much as many reviewers did. It is a fine writerly accomplishment though, complex and many layered, well paced, and only dull for some bits where we've been out on a walk for much too long.
I knew this was the story of a woman training a goshawk, and the cover and every review mentions that her father had recently died, so her process of grief is mingled with the experience of getting to know her new hawk. There's another interesting layer too — the author has read T. H. White's book The Goshawk many, many times, starting when she was a child. She weaves his story into her own, sometimes comparing but more often offering it as a counterpoint, as he was completely inexperienced with falconry, and she has trained many birds before this (but never a goshawk). Even beyond that, she's been a fan of White's famous books about the life of King Arthur, and so she weaves bits of the life of Merlyn and the adventures of Arthur the boy into her tale of coming to grips with loss and moving forward in life. She also lets us get to know her father a little, but she never comes close to making this a story about him.
I liked learning about training hawks. Not that it makes me want to take it up as a hobby — just the killing of rabbits makes that impossible for me — but it gave me an appreciation for the allure and the long history and all the special equipment (who knew there was a special hawking vest with a plastic-lined pocket in the back for a whole dead pheasant?), as well as the subtle ways this goshawk was so different from the other birds the author has trained.
I would not gush and rave about this book as much as many reviewers did. It is a fine writerly accomplishment though, complex and many layered, well paced, and only dull for some bits where we've been out on a walk for much too long.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
2nd book I finished today! Powerful memoir centered on grief, humanity and nature. I can definitely see why it was ranked one of the NYT's best books of the 21st century.
medium-paced
Book is well written it just didn't give me any of the feels I want from a memoir.
No one could have convinced me that a memoir of grief, sublimation of pain, and falconry would be one of my favorite books of the year, but here you have it. I recommend this for everyone who has held secrets and pain, and has poured their energy into something, anything, to keep them from thinking, or worse yet sharing.
Side note: listened to the audiobook read by the author, and she was wonderful.
Side note: listened to the audiobook read by the author, and she was wonderful.
Grief is surprising, random, wrenching and inevitable. When Helen Macdonald loses her father she finds she needs to raise a Goshawk. This is the story of how she trains the hawk and develops a relationship with her. It's also a poignant telling of how she experienced her grief. Sad, but alive.
This book is all I need and want from a book. It was non-fiction without being boring or too academic, it was personal without being too cringe, and it expressed so easily what it is to be human and explore our relationship with the land. There were many pages I reread because they were packed with beauty, I laughed and cried and shared her grief and desire to run away from it all. I really enjoyed her analysis of T. H. White and his novel and life, I felt like a learned a lot and it helped me to reflect on my own life and place within the pattern of the world.