[Review] H is for Hawk -- Helen MacDonald
I would not have picked up this book were it not for a review. It said that this was a book that failed to fit into any convenient category, and indeed I agree. It is at once a bereavement memoir, a history of falconry, and the story of T.H. White, the novelist you know as the author of The Once and Future King.
At the outset of the book, the author's father dies. She was very close, and in her grief she decides to train a goshawk... like you do. She then reveals the history of falconry as well as the frustrations and joys of training a beast which is never truly domesticated but only tamed. And in doing so, you gain a window into a raptors life amongst humans. The world becomes terrain and prey.
What makes this memoir (?history?literary criticism?) is the writing itself. For example, there's a cold snap which she describes as "cold so the hedges are alive with Baltic blackbirds; so cold that each breath hangs like parcelled seafog in the air." There is poetry here, most particularly in her loving descriptions of her new familiar. Although she discusses her grief, she delves far more into the details of training a bird of prey and thus takes this from an ordinary memoir to an extraordinary exploration of a (mostly) lost art.
Though I will never go hawking, I have the natural admiration for those lovely beasts. It was lovely to spend a few weeks of my time with one so lovingly described.
At the outset of the book, the author's father dies. She was very close, and in her grief she decides to train a goshawk... like you do. She then reveals the history of falconry as well as the frustrations and joys of training a beast which is never truly domesticated but only tamed. And in doing so, you gain a window into a raptors life amongst humans. The world becomes terrain and prey.
What makes this memoir (?history?literary criticism?) is the writing itself. For example, there's a cold snap which she describes as "cold so the hedges are alive with Baltic blackbirds; so cold that each breath hangs like parcelled seafog in the air." There is poetry here, most particularly in her loving descriptions of her new familiar. Although she discusses her grief, she delves far more into the details of training a bird of prey and thus takes this from an ordinary memoir to an extraordinary exploration of a (mostly) lost art.
Though I will never go hawking, I have the natural admiration for those lovely beasts. It was lovely to spend a few weeks of my time with one so lovingly described.