Review: H Is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In this memoir, historian, writer and naturalist Helen Macdonald recounts how whilst grieving the sudden death of her father (press photographer Alasdair Macdonald), she successfully homed and trained a Goshawk – one of the most notoriously difficult hawks to engage with.

The loss of her father is so traumatic, and the grief so overwhelming, that at times her sanity and sense of self are threatened and the chasm of full-blown mental illness yawns. Exhausted, isolated and obsessed, she revisits the old books on falconry she loved as a child, and becomes particularly fascinated by the memoirs of writer and fellow austringer T H White (famous for 'The Once And Future King' series). Like Macdonald herself, White found that his efforts to train a Goshawk threw up psychological parallels and challenges; unlike herself, he was forced to abandon his efforts and was unable to fully draw himself back from the brink of despair.

This is a fascinating memoir, beautifully written, and Macdonald's love of the natural world comes shining through and permeates the narrative with lucid and evocative descriptions of the Cambridgeshire countryside. Her descriptions of the Goshawk, Mabel, in all her ferocious beauty, wilfulness and joie de vivre are a delight to read, and I learned such a lot about falconry, hawks and history! An emotionally draining but wonderful book.



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