Having been through a terrible ‘can’t settle on anything’ reading slump in recent times, H is for Hawk was like an unexpected precious gift. I found this memoir honest, interesting, engaging and absorbing. Like all great books it took me to another place, held my attention and I did not want it to end! Best book of my reading year:
Sitting there with the hawk in that darkened room I felt safer than I’d done for months. Partly because I had a purpose. But also because I’d closed the door on the world outside. Now I could think of my father.
Helen writes beautifully – from her overwhelming grief at the sudden death of her beloved father, to her difficult task of training a scary and highly strung goshawk through trial and error (and almost becoming feral herself), and her interest in the history of falconry training. When her job and therefore accommodation at Cambridge University ends she cannot bear to interact with other people and becomes obsessed with training the most difficult and largest of raptors, the goshawk (Mabel), having had a love of hawks and falconry since the age of six.
At one point when teaching Mabel to hunt pheasants (pheasants!) the author pokes her head through a hedge to flush a pheasant out, only to have Mabel gash her face open mistaking her for prey. In the early days it is hard not to feel sorry for Mabel; such a majestic and wild bird tethered and hooded, terrified and hyper alert. I knew nothing of falconry but found the whole process fascinating.
Another of the author’s obsessions is the author T.H White who wrote The Sword in the Stone and was himself a tortured soul and trainer of goshawks. Highly recommended.
*Small grumble: I wanted photographs! Follow this link for a fabulous short talk by the author with photographs:
Helen writes beautifully – from her overwhelming grief at the sudden death of her beloved father, to her difficult task of training a scary and highly strung goshawk through trial and error (and almost becoming feral herself), and her interest in the history of falconry training. When her job and therefore accommodation at Cambridge University ends she cannot bear to interact with other people and becomes obsessed with training the most difficult and largest of raptors, the goshawk (Mabel), having had a love of hawks and falconry since the age of six.
At one point when teaching Mabel to hunt pheasants (pheasants!) the author pokes her head through a hedge to flush a pheasant out, only to have Mabel gash her face open mistaking her for prey. In the early days it is hard not to feel sorry for Mabel; such a majestic and wild bird tethered and hooded, terrified and hyper alert. I knew nothing of falconry but found the whole process fascinating.
Another of the author’s obsessions is the author T.H White who wrote The Sword in the Stone and was himself a tortured soul and trainer of goshawks. Highly recommended.
*Small grumble: I wanted photographs! Follow this link for a fabulous short talk by the author with photographs:
Posted by Katrina
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