one of the most memorable passages I’ve read this year, or for that matter this decade. What’s lovely about is the clarity with which she sees both the inner and outer worlds that she lives in.” -Caleb Crain, New York Review of Books “The art of Macdonald’s book is in the way that she weaves together various kinds of falling apart-the way she loops one unraveling thread of meaning into another. what Macdonald tells us so eloquently in her fine memoir that transformation of our docile or resigned lives can be had if we only look up into the world.” -Susan Straight, Los Angeles Times “ singular book that combines memoir and landscape, history and falconry. her prose glows and burns.” -Karin Altenberg, Wall Street Journal “To categorize this work as merely memoir, nature writing or spiritual writing would understate achievement. It illuminates unexpected things in unexpected ways.” -Guy Gavriel Kay, Washington Post “An elegantly written amalgam of nature writing, personal memoir, literary portrait and an examination of bereavement. Coherent, complete, and riveting, perhaps the finest nonfiction I read in the past year.” -Kathryn Schulz, New Yorker “Had there been an award for the best new book that defies every genre, I imagine it would have won that too. You’ll never see a bird overhead the same way again. “One of the loveliest things you’ll read this year. “Captivating and beautifully written, it’s a meditation on the bond between beasts and humans and the pain and beauty of being alive.” - People (Book of the Week) brings her observer’s eye and poet’s voice to the universal experience of sorrow and loss.” -Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune As she descends into a wild, nearly mad connection with her hawk, her words keep powerful track. Macdonald is a poet, her language rich and taut.
It draws blood, in ways that seem curative.” -Dwight Garner, New York Times
Her book is so good that, at times, it hurt me to read it. “Helen Macdonald’s beautiful and nearly feral book, H Is for Hawk, reminds us that excellent nature writing can lay bare some of the intimacies of the wild world as well. Helen Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor’s fierce essence-and her own-with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don’t notice their astonishing engineering.” -Vicki Constantine Croke, New York Times Book Review (cover review) Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator. 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. Projecting herself “in the hawk’s wild mind to tame her” tested the limits of Macdonald’s humanity and changed her life. White’s chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. 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. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk’s fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. 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. When Helen Macdonald’s father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated.
Louis Post Dispatch, Star Tribune, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot One of Slate’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 YearsĪ Best Book of the Year: TIME, NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, St. One of the New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of the Year