H Is for Hawk

"An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief with a goshawk. . . . Writing with breathless urgency . . . Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment. Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it's poignant, thoughtful and moving and likely to become a classic in either genre." Kirkus Reviews (starred)

" H is for Hawk is a work of great spirit and wonder, illuminated equally by terror and desire. Each beautiful sentence is capable of taking a reader’s breath. The book is built of feather and bone, intelligence and blood, and a vulnerability so profound as to conjure that vulnerability’s shadow, which is the great power of honesty. It is not just a definitive work on falconry; it is a definitive work on humanity, and all that can and cannot be possessed." Rick Bass

"A lovely touching book about a young woman grieving over the death of her father becoming rejuvenated by training one of the roughest, most difficult creatures in the heavens, the goshawk." Jim Harrison

"Rich with the poetry of ideation, the narrative flows through the author’s deeply textured story of personal loss like a mountain wind, swirling seamlessly through fields of literature, biology, natural history, and the art of hunting with hawks. Readers might do well to absorb this book a bite at a time but be prepared for a full meal." Lynn Schooler

"In this elegant synthesis of memoir and literary sleuthing . . . Macdonald describes in beautiful, thoughtful prose how she comes to terms with death in new and startling ways." Publishers Weekly

"A dazzling piece of work: deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love . . . a deeply human work shot through, like cloth of gold, with intelligence and compassion an exemplar of the mysterious alchemy by which suffering can be transmuted into beauty. I will be surprised if a better book than H is for Hawk is published this year." Melissa Harrison, Financial Times

"More than any other writer I know, including her beloved [T.H.] White, Macdonald is able to summon the mental world of a bird of prey . . . she extends the boundaries of nature writing. As a naturalist she has somehow acquired her bird's laser-like visual acuity. As a writer she combines a lexicographer's pleasure in words as carefully curated objects with an inventive passion for new words or for ways of releasing fresh effects from the old stock. . . . Macdonald looks set to revive the genre." Mark Cocker, Guardian

"A talon-sharp memoir that will thrill and chill you to the bone . . . Macdonald has just the right blend of the scientist and the poet, of observing on the one hand and feeling on the other." Craig Brown, Daily Mail

"What [Macdonald] has achieved is a very rare thing in literature a completely realistic account of a human relationship with animal consciousness. . . . Her training of Mabel has the suspense and tension of the here and now. You are gripped by the slightest movement, by the turn of every feather. It is a soaring performance and Mabel is the star." John Carey, Sunday Times

"A well-wrought book, one part memoir, one part gorgeous evocation of the natural world and one part literary meditation . . . lit with flashes of grace, a grace that sweeps down to the reader to hold her wrist tight with beautiful, terrible claws. The discovery of the season." Erica Wagner, Economist

"The magnificent H is for Hawk [has] grabbed me by its talons . . . [it’s] nature writing, but not as you know it. Astounding." Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller

"It sings. I couldn't stop reading." Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother

"This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration: elegy for a father lost, celebration of a hawk found - and in the finding also a celebration of countryside, forbears of one kind and another, life-in-death. At a time of very distinguished writing about the relationship between human kind and the environment, it is immediately pre-eminent." Andrew Motion, author of In the Blood

"A deep, dark work of terrible beauty that will open fissures in the stoniest heart. . . . Macdonald is a survivor . . . she has produced one of the most eloquent accounts of bereavement you could hope to read . . . A grief memoir with wings." The Bookseller

"A book made from the heart that goes to the heart . . . It combines old and new nature and human nature with great originality. No one who has looked up to see a bird of prey cross the sky could read it and not have their life shifted." Tim Dee, author of The Running Sky

"The most magical book I have ever read." Olivia Laing, author of The Trip to Echo Springs

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 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 anger 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 Sword and the Stone author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her journey into Mabel’s world. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald’s humanity.

By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement; a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast; and the story of an eccentric falconer and legendary writer. Weaving together obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history, H is for Hawk is a distinctive, surprising blend of nature writing and memoir from a very gifted writer.