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Loading... H is for Hawk (original 2014; edition 2015)by Helen Macdonald (Author)
Work InformationH Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (2014)
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Dense, rich, delicious prose, and so many good and kind thoughts and trying to figure out ways of thinking, and, and, and. I really really enjoyed this book, even (especially) when I ached in recognition at her passage through grief. Probably my favorite parts, however, are the meditations on the nature of "wildness" and the human imagination. Edited to add: looking through the other reviews, the most frequent complaint about this book is the inclusion of T.H. White's story, which on the one hand I want to understand--it is occasionally a little repetitious--but on the other hand fills me with fury and makes me want to yell at innocent Goodreads people about how they lack understanding. Part of this is gay territorialness--White's closeted and traumatized anguish makes me ache for him in recognition and solidarity. And part of it is also: the first six months after a major traumatic event, during which time a beloved uncle was also dying of cancer in my home, I became obsessed with Virginia Woolf. I read four of her novels, A Room of One's Own, and an eight-hundred page biography of her. Her work, of course, relates much less directly to my own experiences of sexual violence as a teenager (not a theme explicitly addressed in her work to any significant degree), but she haunted me nonetheless. People commenting that the book should have focused on MacDonald's grief instead of diverting into thinking about White seem, to me, to be missing the point entirely: the story of her moving through grief would not be complete without White, in some form or fashion.
Helen Macdonald’s beautiful and nearly feral book, “H Is for Hawk,” her first published in the United States, reminds us that excellent nature writing can lay bare some of the intimacies of the wild world as well. Her book is so good that, at times, it hurt me to read it. It draws blood, in ways that seem curative. Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs a commentary on the text ofAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer captivated by hawks since childhood, she'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators: the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral anger mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T. H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her journey into Mabel's world. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity.By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement, a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, and the story of an eccentric falconer and legendary writer. Weaving together obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history, H Is for Hawk is a distinctive, surprising blend of nature writing and memoir from a very gifted writer. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)598.944Natural sciences and mathematics Zoology Birds Raptors, birds of prey Accipitridae HawksLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Her misery at her father's death has not enabled her to present him as a vivid character in his own right. But her portrait of the painful life of White is a fascinating one, and likely to make me re-discover books I haven't read since I was a teenager. Likewise, her picture of the countryside of Cambridgeshire makes it seem more rewarding than I had previously thought. I remained fascinated by her descriptions of training Mabel, her hawk, and her musings on her relationship with her, and the feelings of both of them towards the bird's prey.
Her own miseries were harder to understand, and finally somewhat wearied me. But this is a splendid book for the richness of its prose, and the chance it offers to see two wholly unknown worlds: that of the falconer, and that of TH White. ( )