I've been on a visual violence fast for the past month or more. Reading books before turning out my light instead of streaming Netflix opened up time for a biography that reads like a novel in my sea of how-to, informative reads. While I avoided visual violence, Macdonald plunged me into a world of vigorous grief that left me squaring off with one person's intimate tragedy instead of benignly viewing the danger and destruction of countless someones' as experienced watching Person of Interest.

A satisfying read lush with atmospheric descriptions and vivid first person narrative of loss, focus, passion, and eventual awareness. Macdonald loves words and crafts her story with spare, sensitive brilliance.

Will I read it again? Maybe. Did it change my life? Not in a metaphysical way, but in the way that good books do. It stirred my imagination, introduced me to new ideas, and left me loving story more than ever. ( )

People use all kinds of methods to cope with the grief of loosing a loved one. And while buying a hawk and training it to kill is not a method many would use, that's exactly what Helen Macdonald did. H is for Hawk is a wonderful account of how the bond these two formed. Being able to watch her hawk soar from her hand and into the sky lifted Helen from her despair allowing her to soar as well ! ( )

An account of personal loss, falconry with a Goshawk, and an insightful exploration of T.H.White and his book, The Goshawk. I found White's book confusing, until I read this one. ( )

Histrionic. Helen Macdonald's memoir of falconry and loss is like an amped up Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - astutely observant about nature but loaded down with emotional baggage and narrative sleight of hand. It is overwritten and somewhat emotionally dishonest.

It leads the reader towards the conclusion that she survived the grieving process through her (rather cool) hobby and relationship with Mabel, her goshawk. She writes in detail about the drama of training this wild and cruel animal, but she seems to de emphasize that she is an expert falconer with years of experience. She also repeats the point that Mabel is an alien creature, and that the falconer's worst mistake is that of T.H. White - feeling pity or love towards the hawk. But yet she contradicts herself by constantly ascribing human characteristics to the bird.

Looking back at my other reviews, I have less patience with this genre than with others. The point of reading memoirs is that the reader gleans wisdom from the writer's experiences. But I see it as an act of egotism - why is your life experience so meaningful that I should be expected to give up hours of my life reliving it?

It is also a question of framing. What details does she leave out to smooth the rough edges of her art, to obscure the truth in order to maximize the dramatic weight? Of course her father was a saint. Of course she succeeds with the hawk.

Write a novel, or a poem at least. Spare us the navel-gazing and self importance. ( )

So finally, after pushing the stack and reading the whole of The Once and Future King, and the whole of The Goshawk, I came back to H is for Hawk.

I'm glad I did. The book feels richer, deeper, for being read in the context of my own views of what White wrote in the Goshawk. And sharper - there are many fair comments from Macdonald about Whites mistakes and follies, but their own book is not entirely free from errors in hawk training. Maybe that is the story, a long procession of people all meeting their own weaknesses and fears through confronting the wild.

The prose is beautiful. It is a book that feels very near - I don't need to try and understand an alien world for this rich tale of Cambridge, of failing at acadaemia and leaving, of grief at the death of parents, at losing oneself in the wildness and wondering how to return.

I feel like I know White so well from being saturated in his prose, but it is interesting to get this... well, birds eye view of him. The short clear descriptions of the things he never dared say about himself, which were always there under the surface of his own writings.

It is a book of feelings. A book where nothing happens and everything happens, where you feel like you have been inside someone else's head, and feel less lonely as a result. How Macdonald escapes into eccentricity, how it is both the fulfilment of a long dream and also a folly to hide in.

A deeply nourishing book. ( )