Odd and ingenious

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sometimes a book arrives in your life at precisely the moment you need it. In fact I had had Helen Macdonald's 'H is for Hawk' in my sights since the critics started raving about it back in 2014 and for that reason had made sure I was 'given' it for Christmas. Little did I know that it was to be the last Christmas I would ever spend with my mother, who died suddenly on January 29th this year, and that five weeks on, I would find myself turning to the opening page of 'H is for Hawk' as a first attempt at reading fiction since the cudgel-blow of becoming an orphan.

I had of course gathered from the blurb that Macdonald's book had something to do with getting over the death of her father, but I never imagined the depth of the chord this would strike. This wasn't because there were any coincident similarities in what happened to her father and to my mother - there weren't! - but simply because the elements of loss which Macdonald covers, so movingly and eloquently, are universal. I wasn't training a goshawk to cope with my own grief, but every word of every sentence rang true.

But fear not, this is not just a book for people going through bereavement. Far from it. There are myriad other reasons to love it. For a start, Macdonald's account of trying to train her bird, Mabel, is gripping, page-turning. Goshawks are notoriously fierce and un-trainable. As Macdonald takes us through her story she manages to convey her love of Mabel alongside a poignant and respectful recognition of the bird's separateness. Mabel is a wild animal. Being free to be wild is integral to her beauty.

Threaded through the narrative there is also a compelling and chilling analysis of T H White, the famously talented but damaged and dubious author, whose body of work includes a book called 'The Goshawk' in which he details his own clumsy, failed efforts to tame an identical bird. As a lover of hawks, Macdonald has been haunted by T H White's book all her life. Her account of his pitiful efforts at hawk-training, the cruelty that emanates from sheer hubris and ignorance, grow almost too gruelling to read. Every time we got back to Macdonald and her own infinitely wiser, gentler and more successful approaches with Mabel, I heaved a sigh of relief. When White's bird finally escapes I punched the air.

If this all makes 'H is for Hawk' sound a bit odd, then that is because it is. Odd and ingenious. Binding the whole package together, the most magic of ingredients, is Macdonald's extraordinary use of language. According to her jacket blurb, the author is a 'writer, poet, illustrator and historian', and boy does it show. Every description, whether of her own state of mind, or of her goshawk, or of the world around them, shimmers with insight and power. To take just one example, try this:
"The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten."
Or this, of Mabel:
"She yawns, showing her pink mouth like a cat's and its arrowhead tongue with its black tip. Her creamy underparts are draped right down over her feet, so only one lemony toe and one carbon-black talon are exposed.'
I could go on, but I'm afraid I might end up quoting the whole book.



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