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H Is For Hawk cover art

H Is For Hawk

By: Helen MacDonald
Narrated by: Helen MacDonald
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Summary

Winner of the 2014 Costa Book of the Year Award

Winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize.

Costa Biography Award Winner 2014

'In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. Bigger, yes. But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see. Birds of deep woodland, not gardens, they’re the birdwatchers’ dark grail.’

As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H. White’s tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White’s struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest.

When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

To train a hawk you must watch it like a hawk, and so gain the ability to predict what it will do next. Eventually you don’t see the hawk’s body language at all. You seem to feel what it feels. The hawk’s apprehension becomes your own. As the days passed and I put myself in the hawk’s wild mind to tame her, my humanity was burning away.’

Destined to be a classic of nature writing, H is for Hawk is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it's a kaleidoscopic biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T. H. White, best known for The Once and Future King.

It's a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love.

©2014 Helen MacDonald (P)2014 Random House Audiobooks

What listeners say about H Is For Hawk

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Superb Autobiography, superb audiobook.

Absolutely exquisite auto-biography. It's the story of healing from grief and loss, through the good graces of nature, landscape, and a hawk called Mabel. Interwoven with Helen MacDonald's own story is the weird life and writing of T. H. White, particularly his book 'The Goshawk', telling the sorry story of his attempt to 'man' a Goshawk. His healing through writing is an essential part of her story. It's poetic, honest, wears its knowledge very lightly, and I loved it. As narrated (really well) by Helen MacDonald herself, the warmth and intimacy of a fine book is enhanced in the audio version. On its own, this is a great advertisement for audio books.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The cure for loneliness is solitude


“The hawk had filled the house with wildness as a bowl of lilies fills a house with scent.”

Enter a world that is intense with feeling and imagery, a book about books, history and becoming and loving the wild around us the wild in us, accepting the death of a hunt but respecting the dead, a book about loss.

“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. Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“We carry the lives we’ve imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all of the lives we have lost.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

My brother recommended me this book, I had overlooked it, but as soon as I entered the author's lair I was trapped by the beauty of its language, the intensity of feeling some so primordial, like smell and blood, the desire to fly. She exposes her understanding, her love, her most personal vulnerabilities like few authors dare, this is not a novel this is a confessional a sadness shared an obsession explained and she manages to bring to life, moments, details that were a mystery a dark art, that has been practiced thru the centuries.
This is an opportunity to enter a world of secrets and memories passed on from person to person through time through diverse civilisations, an opportunity into a magical world where perfect killers become bonded with a human through and act so mysterious and delicate it is hard to believe, the dedication the patience it requires.

“Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill. Yesterday I discovered that when I suck air through my teeth and make a squeaking noise like an injured rabbit, all the tendons in her toes instantaneously contract, driving her talons into the glove with terrible, crushing force. This killing grip is an old, deep pattern in her brain, an innate response that hasn't yet found the stimulus meant to release it. Because other sounds provoke it: door hinges, squealing brakes, bicycles with unoiled wheels - and on the second afternoon, Joan Sutherland singing an aria on the radio. Ow. I laughed out loud at that. Stimulus: opera. Response: kill.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

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16 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Lives up to the hype

I was hearing praise for this memoir from all quarters and finally gave in and spent a credit. It's a worthy winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and all its other accolades- poetical, funny, mesmerising, full of insights and information. If you're looking for a book that seizes you by the lapels it might not be for you; it can be cool, standoffish, un-snuggly--a bit like its titular hawk. After the first hour I at least was completely hooked and it brought a rewarding mood of contemplation to my work week. Perfectly read by the author, who unlike many writers sounds like a professional reader (in fact, just realised to my surprise that it was read by the author, in writing this review!). Highly recommended for bookish lovers of nature.

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15 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Great book, brilliantly read by the author

A very rich book and wonderfully read. It brings together the personal journey of the author through the period where she is coming to terms with the sudden death of her father while training her hawk, and her analysis of the life and memoir of TH White who writes about his attempts to tame a similar a hawk. And much on history of falconry and on natural history.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

This is a book worth buying for friends.

After listening to this book, it has moved me to want to have conversations with others on the different subjects & levels it covers. I've decided to buy more copies to give to my friends, with the hope that these conversation will happen.

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8 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Too many words.

What would have made H Is For Hawk better?

About 3 hours shorter.she never used one word when ten words would do,I just wanted her to get to the point.

What could Helen MacDonald have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Get to the point,

What does Helen MacDonald bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

She has a very good narration style.

What character would you cut from H Is For Hawk?

None.

Any additional comments?

I tried 4 times to listen to this audio book,each time she beat me into submission,by going using too many words.

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6 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Open a new world

This is a wonderful story of loss and struggle; it is also a story intwined with the changing season and is very brave document of coping with grief told sensitively and lyrically.

Helen MacDonald is author and narrator as well as falconer. I know nothing much about falconry. I have seen flaconers displays and fly their birds at county shows or something, but this ancient art of training and flying raptors is obviously more than an ancient curio seen in museum tapestries or carvings and illustrated medieval Books of Hours etc. She brings alive the passion and pain of living and bonding with a goshawk and weaves into it the story of T H White's experiences not only as a fellow goshawk trainer but also as a very damaged man.

She tells the story of her life, that of her father's and of T H White with a truth and understanding that makes it more than the sum of its parts. I think too knowing that she is also the narrator makes is much more of a personal story. Very well done!

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5 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

An incredibly rich vocabulary on hawks

If you could sum up H Is For Hawk in three words, what would they be?

Rather 3 groups of two words each:
Life & Love
Devotion & Determination
Death & Depression

What was one of the most memorable moments of H Is For Hawk?

When Helen takes Marbel for the first time out in the open air.

What does Helen MacDonald bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Her voice is coloured with emotion, anxiety at times, sadness and grief, fear of loss. Even though the description of abstract emotions or vivid scenes are done elegantly with accurate and precise words that best fit the situation, Helen's voice gives an extra dimension to the description of every scene and situation.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

How I turned myself into a hawk.

Any additional comments?

The book's ability to describe a simple scene, for example how a bird scratches its feathers, it is so vivid and so precisely done using such exact words, many of them forgotten, some of them not knowing their existence but just the right words and never the same.
I also liked the combination of words like: "innocent cruelty", "inhuman understanding", "alien perspective" and many more.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Couldn't listen to the end

I had great hopes for this book but found it as dull as ditch water. At first I found the author's voice relaxing but the tone never changed and it became a monotonous drone that got on my nerves. Most of the book that I listened to was about T. H White and a book he had written about his own Goshawk. The author agonises over it, comparing his experiences to that of her own, she is wrapped up in his story, terrified of making his mistakes.
She is wracked by grief after the loss of her father but she is far too self absorbed, over analysing, looking for failure. Seemingly depressed she has no structure in her life apart from her hawk's training and her interest in white. She is too introspective and I lost all sympathy and patience with her. To put it bluntly I wanted her to get a grip and yearned for some positivity.
Her own hawk Mabel was not as an important a part of the story as I had expected, more of a background thread. There are reports of training and interaction between the two but I was expecting more of a relationship - more warmth.
The Author seems unclear of her reason for wanting to own or train a Goshawk other than she 'needs to'. It is not the happy escapism that I was looking for, I wanted to shout at her and tell her to buck up, I found the book pretentious, I would not recommend it too a friend.

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5 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Heartbreakingly beautiful

I haven't enjoyed a book this much for a long time and I suspect H is for Hawk will become part of the pantheon of my favourites ever. A sad, funny, uplifting story with some of the most evocative writing ('cappuccino samurai' is a sheer joy) - Helen Macdonald is a master craftsman and a superb narrator.

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