comptron 's review for:

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

4.0

---

Part memoir (grieving the sudden loss of a father), part nature writing (hawks! I knew nothing about them!), and part biography of fantasy writer T.H. White (I also knew nothing about this man, other than that he wrote 'The Once and Future King' - but, interesting bloke indeed). No excess sentimentality here - just lovely writing on topics both otherworldly and altogether common. Very, very pleased with this, enough that it wholly gripped me (and I gripped it) throughout a few hours of tattooing, following which I ran home to pull out my NatGeo book on birds to actually figure out what a goshawk is -- which only made me think Ms Macdonald all the more awesome.