H is for Hawk

Macdonald, Helen

£10.99

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 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. This book 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.

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Publish Date: 26/02/2015

Description

Discover the number one bestselling phenomenon that is a powerful and profound mediation on grief expressed through the trials of training a goshawk.

**WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR**
** WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION**

As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

H is for Hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald’s struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk’s taming and her own untaming. This is a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.

**SELECTED BY CARIAD LLOYD ON BBC TWO’S BETWEEN THE COVERS**

‘This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration’ Andrew Motion

‘It just sings. I couldn’t stop reading’ Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

‘Dazzling… Deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love and intelligence’ Financial Times

Additional information

Weight 258 g
Dimensions 198 × 131 × 21 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

300

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

598.944092 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K