H is for Hawk

Summary (from the publisher): When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer, Helen had been captivated by hawks since childhood but 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 temperament 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 challenging endeavor. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity and changed her life.

Heart-wrenching and humorous, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement and a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, with a parallel examination of a legendary writer's eccentric falconry. Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator.

 

Review: This work of non-fiction chronicles author Helen Macdonald's experiences training a goshawk while grieving her father's unexpected death. In this book, she relates to the reader what it's like to train a vicious predator and in so doing relives the experience related by T.H. White in The Goshawk. In the process, she comes to terms with her grief and delves into central questions that her love of birds turned obsession inspires: What is it that binds human beings to animals? And what separates us?  Drawn to the hawk because they share a fierce and feral temperament, Macdonald slowly is able to recover her humanity and her connection to the greater world.

 

The title of this work alludes to the author's habit of dissecting a word's meaning, which of course can never quite capture the feeling or experience that the word is meant to convey. "Here's a word. Bereavement. Or, Bereaved. Bereft. It's from the Old English bereafian, meaning 'to deprive of, take away, seize, rob.' Robbed. Seized. It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone" (11). Similarly, the seemingly simple title cannot convey the complicated relationship Macdonald has with her own hawk, Mabel, but also the complicated reasons why she decided to attempt to tame a goshawk at this precise moment in her life. Additionally, the title refers to Macdonald's childhood obsession with "falconry's disconcertingly complex vocabulary" (45).  

 

The tie-in of White's class work detailing his own experiencing of taming a goshawk was an interesting aspect to this book. Helen identifies with White while simultaneously recognizing the many flaws in his taming technique.  "Like White, I wanted to cut loose from the world, and I shared too, his desire to escape to the wild, a desire that can rip away all human softness and leave you stranded in a world of savage, courteous despair" (36). Macdonald and White both strive to be like their hawks: "solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life" (83). Yet White's is a tragic story for his bird is lost in the end, an unsatisfying conclusion without a true ending. Helen's experience with her own bird enables her to have "a quiet conversation, of sorts, with the deeds and words of a long-dead man" (36).

 

Focusing so intensely and exclusively on her purpose - taming Mable - allows Macdonald the seclusion she needs to grieve for her father. Yet in the end, she realizes that the wild is not the answer to her pain. "Hands are for other human hands to hold. They should not be reserved exclusively as perches for hawks. And the wild is not a panacea for the human soul" (216).

 

I learned more about hawks and training birds of prey than I ever imagined through reading this book. Macdonald includes beautiful, vivid descriptions of her bird that reveal her deep reverence for all falcons: "She is a conjuring trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. A griffon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water. A broken marionette of wings, legs and light-splashed feathers" (51). This was a deeply introspective book that delves into the author's personal experience of grief. Despite the very human feelings that underpin her unique subject, I never felt deeply connected to either her method of dealing with her grief or with her desire to train such a vicious, albeit beautiful, creature.

 

Stars: 3