H is for Hawk got a lot of attention when it came out 2 years ago, and deservedly so. It's one of these curious hybrids -- the author guides you through a surprising constellation of intriguing things, which are all connected in some way, but mostly through her. When Helen Macdonald's father passes away, she copes with her grief by training a goshawk. In the process, she revisits T. H. White's book, The Goshawk, which then takes her down a rabbit hole of learning more about White himself (a somewhat gloomy adventure), and reflecting on his work, and his relationship to himself and his hawk, as a way of reflecting, too, on herself, and her relationship to her hawk and the process of training it, and on the art of falconry, and how humans relate to and write about animals, and all kinds of other things.
I experienced the text as an audiobook, and on the one hand, it was the best way to do so, because it's read by Macdonald, and her voice is melodious and wonderful and she reads it beautifully. Listening to her descriptions of nature as you're driving by Midwestern fields glistening after an afternoon rainstorm, or blanketed in their strange morning fogs, is pretty much perfect. On the other hand, it's the worst way to do so, because the book's intense focus on particular moments, coupled with its overall meandering structure, makes you want to pause, re-read, flip back a few pages, savor. Find some way to do both, friends!
Perhaps that would have made me love it more; if I could have basked in it a bit, and kept better track of the various threads. Or perhaps I would have come to find it slightly precious and overwritten, or gotten a bit (more) tired of the T. H. White bits. Hard to say.
In any case, it's certainly a worthwhile read: a poignant account of grief, an interesting investigation of the relationships between human and animals, and the animal as a category, plus, who would've thunk it, a surprisingly fascinating (albeit depressing) précis of T. H. White biographies.
I experienced the text as an audiobook, and on the one hand, it was the best way to do so, because it's read by Macdonald, and her voice is melodious and wonderful and she reads it beautifully. Listening to her descriptions of nature as you're driving by Midwestern fields glistening after an afternoon rainstorm, or blanketed in their strange morning fogs, is pretty much perfect. On the other hand, it's the worst way to do so, because the book's intense focus on particular moments, coupled with its overall meandering structure, makes you want to pause, re-read, flip back a few pages, savor. Find some way to do both, friends!
Perhaps that would have made me love it more; if I could have basked in it a bit, and kept better track of the various threads. Or perhaps I would have come to find it slightly precious and overwritten, or gotten a bit (more) tired of the T. H. White bits. Hard to say.
In any case, it's certainly a worthwhile read: a poignant account of grief, an interesting investigation of the relationships between human and animals, and the animal as a category, plus, who would've thunk it, a surprisingly fascinating (albeit depressing) précis of T. H. White biographies.
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