H Is for Hawk (2014)

Surprisingly readable. Well constructed prose that weaves Macdonald’s falconry experiences into her interpretation of T. H. White’s, both locked in an obsessive battle of wills with goshawks to process grief. Macdonald shows scholarly appreciation for history, literary criticism, and linguistics (a hawk in hunting condition is in yarak, Turkish for weapon but commonly slang for dick). More disciplined editing, esp. in her passages on White, could have made the book tighter. ( )

H IS FOR HAWK is written by Helen Macdonald. Ms. Macdonald is an English writer, naturalist and an affiliated research scholar at the University of Cambridge.
H IS FOR HAWK has won untold prizes and recognition. The title appears on many (too many to count) Best Books Lists.
H IS FOR HAWK is a book about falconry.
It is a book about training a goshawk.
It is a memoir; an auto-biographical account of a period in Ms. Macdonald’s life when she was reeling from the sudden death of her father.
It is a book about deep, all-consuming sorrow and despair. A book about grief, loss and ultimately hope.
I was very interested in the study of falconry with its world-wide, diverse cultures and techniques. Fascinating. I always like a ‘naturalist’s’ point of view and descriptions.
The lyrical narrative was very mesmerizing.
It was a love poem to birds, in general. An ode to hawks, in particular.
Much of the book was taken up with Ms. Macdonald’s study of T. H. White. While I found ‘her’ writing very interesting, I was not at all impressed with T.H. White.
I also found all the death and the tearing apart of small animals’ limbs and organs very off-putting.
Some of the passages resonated so much with me that I include them here.
“Looking for goshawks is like looking for grace: it comes, but not often, and you don’t get to say when or how.” p. 5
“”Hunting with the hawk took me to the very edge of being a human. Then it took me past that place to somewhere I wasn’t human at all. The hawk in flight, me running after her, the land and the air a pattern of deep and curving detail, sufficient to block out anything like the past or the future.” p. 195
“Hunting makes you an animal, but the death of an animal makes you human.” p.196

A very resonating memoir. Highly recommended. **** ( )

I read this after watching Helen's PBS show about her second goshawk, so I'm very late to add any comments to the enormous number of reviews already provided! Although the aspects of White's experiences with his hawk efforts were interesting, I was much more interested in Helen's work, especially in relation to how it connected with her grief over her father's death---but perhaps the contrast was needed. As for the whole idea of falconry---I'm less than enthused over the history of using these magnificent wild creatures to train them to do what?? Helen was looking for a relationship with these birds and she certainly succeeded but I'm afraid I still think they should be just observed from afar. ( )

Ho letto la recensione e ho acquistato il libro. Ho iniziato a leggerlo con la solita avidità ma, mano a mano, le pagine non scorrevano più. Finchè mi sono arenata, dopo un centinaio o poco più.

Sono pensieri di chi ha subito una perdita e dovrebbero avere un filo conduttore, la falconeria. Ma non fila, non è scorrevole, vi sono rimandi a libri sulla materia, citazioni, molti termini tecnici, nomi di uccelli, di versi di uccelli, di piumaggi. Ma non vi ho trovato un aggancio alla mia sensibilità.

E quindi lo mollo. Perchè, come dice Stephen King, il lettore, tra i suoi diritti, ha quello di mollare il libro che sta leggendo, senza rimorsi.
( )

Initially, I loved this book, which felt like it was going to be a love story about a bird that had once seemed to teeter on the brink of extinction. But it soon shifted as it felt like a story as much about TH White and what a despicable, selfish jerk he was as anything else. I don't care why he was the way he was, hearing how he treated his hawk was just painful page-filler. When the only character I cared about - the hawk - began to take on a minor role, the book just began to feel like somebody's self-indulgent blog. ( )