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A review by lalawoman416
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
4.0
So this book was not what I expected at all. I expected a traditional memoir of loss. Instead, I got three stories that didn't all necessarily seamlessly meld but interesting, all the same.
Helen MacDonald suddenly loses her father and so she throws herself head first into training a Goss Hawk. She's an experienced falconer, this isn't a whim, but she's never trained this particular type of hawk which is known to be one of the most difficult to train. But she needs the distraction and welcomes the challenge.
While she's training her hawk, she drifts into memories of reading T.H. White's book about training a Goss Hawk. This is where she lost a star from me. She, basically, writes a dissertation on T.H. White's book and his method in training his Goss. And although the dissertation itself is quite interesting, T.H. White is awful with the hawk. It made me hate him and I wanted nothing to do with him.
This book starts off quite slow, but it's prose just captures your attention and, next thing you know, you're 2/3 of the way through it. It took a year, but Helen gets there, and I'm glad I went on the journey with her.
Helen MacDonald suddenly loses her father and so she throws herself head first into training a Goss Hawk. She's an experienced falconer, this isn't a whim, but she's never trained this particular type of hawk which is known to be one of the most difficult to train. But she needs the distraction and welcomes the challenge.
While she's training her hawk, she drifts into memories of reading T.H. White's book about training a Goss Hawk. This is where she lost a star from me. She, basically, writes a dissertation on T.H. White's book and his method in training his Goss. And although the dissertation itself is quite interesting, T.H. White is awful with the hawk. It made me hate him and I wanted nothing to do with him.
This book starts off quite slow, but it's prose just captures your attention and, next thing you know, you're 2/3 of the way through it. It took a year, but Helen gets there, and I'm glad I went on the journey with her.