---
product_id: 23802242
title: "H Is for Hawk"
price: "€ 22.35"
currency: EUR
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reviews_count: 8
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region: Austria
---

# H Is for Hawk

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desertcart.com: H Is for Hawk: 9780802124739: Macdonald, Helen, Macdonald, Helen, Macdonald, Helen: Books

Review: A beautiful and poetic memoir. - In these days of climate change and wholesale destruction of nature, we hang all hopes for the future on nature’s resilience. That resilience is the theme underlying Helen Macdonald’s memoir H Is For Hawk (Grove Press, 2014). Hers is a triangulated story shifting from her father’s death to the life of Arthurian legend writer T.H. White to Macdonald’s training of Mabel the goshawk, the medium-large raptor Accipiter gentilis of the title. If these seem like strange bedfellows, Macdonald makes these transitions smoothly and by the end of the book, weaves a story of personal redemption and self-discovery that is both wise and profound. T. H. White also wrote a book about raising and training a goshawk, and Macdonald turns to the celebrated author’s book as a guide for her own journey with Mabel. He was not as prepared as Macdonald, and therefore his account is more fraught with difficulty and disappointment. Yet he is a touchstone for Macdonald, a connection to an experience with an animal who has as much to teach her trainer as her trainer has to understand this predatory bird. With a goshawk, however, there is no taming her nature; Macdonald, with great difficulty, simply trains the bird to follow her own instincts as a hunter of prey, and human and hawk learn to work as a unit on the hunt. Macdonald’s father was a photojournalist who died in 2007. She recounts his passing while on the job, and how she had to go with family members to pick up his belongings and find his car, which had been towed away when he did not return to pick it up while covering his final story. Macdonald was very close to him, and the loss is almost overwhelming. Part of her own training is to learn to live with loss and grief. She recounts how her father taught her patience as the most important virtue. He tells her that one must be willing to stay still and wait for her moment, much like a piece of reindeer moss can survive “just about anything the world throws at it” and remain resilient. It is ironic that she finds herself staring at the moss when her mother informs her of her father’s passing. The life of an Astringer—a solitary trainer of goshawks and sparrowhawks—is a lonely one, and Macdonald describes her daily life and routines with Mabel in poetic and deeply harmonic language. The setting of the book is the Brecklands, a place known as the broken lands, and the area lives up to its name. She clings to the words of Marianne Moore: “The cure for loneliness is solitude.” She tells us she has learned to hold tight and survive, much like the security of the jesses, leather straps that bind the hawk to the Astringer. Her twin brother did not survive the difficult birth that brought Macdonald into the world. Macdonald is so good at distilling the wisdom she absorbs from training Mabel. She tells us there are two things she has learned about training hawks: the Astringer must learn to become invisible, and the way to a hawk’s heart is through positive reinforcement with food. Hawks are not social animals like dogs or horses. They are predators, and their predatory nature is bred in their bones. She equates training goshawks with “white-knuckle jobs” as described by her father. These are dangerous journalism assignments. Her father’s defense against the fear is to “look through the viewfinder” and stop being involved. Instead, become the witness. “All that exists is a square of finely ground glass and the world seen through it,” he tells her. His advice in stressful, dangerous situations is to be mindful of “exposure and depth of field and getting the shot you hope for.” Macdonald sees her father’s work in each photograph as “a record, a testament, a bulwark against forgetting, against nothingness, against death.” Rooted in her father’s philosophy is one that Macdonald also discovers in nature when training Mabel. The world is forever; we are only a blink in its course. Macdonald references Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great French street photographer, and his photographs of a decisive moment. A good photograph means being open to all life offers and in an intuitive moment, click the shutter to capture. If one misses the moment, it is gone forever. Our lesson is to live in that moment—no past, no future, only the here and now. Throughout the book, Macdonald’s writing is poetic and beautiful. She writes: “There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are.” She also does not neglect the mythological elements of hawks and falcons, one that has played out over millennia: in ancient shamanic traditions in Eurasian cultures, “hawks and falcons were seen as messengers between this world and the next.” Mabel comes into Helen Macdonald’s life right at a time of need, and in working with this intense and intelligent animal, she finds peace and purpose in her life. She illuminates a culture that most of us never experience: training a fierce and intense goshawk to hunt with her human counterpart. In the end, Macdonald comes to understand the overwhelming grief and loss inherent in this life. Her story is extraordinary and extraordinarily beautiful.
Review: Although the author had previously published lesser books this publication marks her sudden ascendancy to #1 on the NY Times Bes - When the title of this book first flashed across my Kindle screen I thought it would be another in Sue Grafton’s “alphabet series” of murder mysteries. But no, it is the highly acclaimed memoir of British author Helen MacDonald. “H is for Hawk” describes her experience as a falconer training a young northern goshawk (acciper gentilis) to hunt free from the fist in the countryside near Cambridge where she taught. The zooligical name of the bird belies its true nature - which is quite vicious - especially while in pursuit of prey. It is also the most difficult of hawks to train. Although the author had previously published lesser books this publication marks her sudden ascendancy to #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list for non-fiction. By profession a historian and teacher of English Ms MacDonald is also an accomplished falconer, having raised and trained many different kinds of hawk since her seemingly idyllic childhood. The sudden death of her father in the prime of his life while photographing on assignment catapults her into inconsolable grief. A momentous decision to raise and train a young goshawk abruptly changes the trajectory of her life. In this memoir covering less than one year in her life she describes in great detail one experience after another – from the initial acquisition of the bird to its first spring molting season. These experiences are colored by her intensely felt and palpable emotions. It is an account filled with numerous flashbacks to earlier events – not only in her life – but more significantly to the life experiences and writings of T.H. While. An earlier English writer he is probably best known for “The Sword in the Stone” and “The Once and Future King” – Arthurian fantasies which served as he basis of a popular Disney animation. Terence Hanley White was also the author of “Goshawk” – a memoir chronicling his disastrous relationship to a goshawk he raised and trained in the most inappropriate manner. While there are parallels between the two experiences – his and hers – they are vastly different in their outcomes. One might think that such a story could lead to a boring book – unless one were fascinated by the sport of falconry – which I certainly am not. While reading one is exposed to myriad details pertaining to hawks and falconry. However, the structure is skilfully pieced together and the writing is of the highest caliber. Ms MacDonald’s prose is both elegant and eloquent. The stages of her grief and her relationship with this bird – as well as the countryside – become tangible to a reader. Some would find it a depressing work – since clearly she has gone through – and seemingly recovered to some extent from – a deep state of depression. I did not find it depressing or boring to read. Though at times I wished – like some other reviewers – that she would eliminate many of the paraphrases of White’s text – I nevertheless found the brilliancy of the writing made up for these excursions.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #14,110 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #11 in Nature Writing & Essays #29 in Bird Field Guides #228 in Memoirs (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.0 out of 5 stars 7,394 Reviews |

## Images

![H Is for Hawk - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81CcEVwvt3L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A beautiful and poetic memoir.
*by P***N on January 7, 2022*

In these days of climate change and wholesale destruction of nature, we hang all hopes for the future on nature’s resilience. That resilience is the theme underlying Helen Macdonald’s memoir H Is For Hawk (Grove Press, 2014). Hers is a triangulated story shifting from her father’s death to the life of Arthurian legend writer T.H. White to Macdonald’s training of Mabel the goshawk, the medium-large raptor Accipiter gentilis of the title. If these seem like strange bedfellows, Macdonald makes these transitions smoothly and by the end of the book, weaves a story of personal redemption and self-discovery that is both wise and profound. T. H. White also wrote a book about raising and training a goshawk, and Macdonald turns to the celebrated author’s book as a guide for her own journey with Mabel. He was not as prepared as Macdonald, and therefore his account is more fraught with difficulty and disappointment. Yet he is a touchstone for Macdonald, a connection to an experience with an animal who has as much to teach her trainer as her trainer has to understand this predatory bird. With a goshawk, however, there is no taming her nature; Macdonald, with great difficulty, simply trains the bird to follow her own instincts as a hunter of prey, and human and hawk learn to work as a unit on the hunt. Macdonald’s father was a photojournalist who died in 2007. She recounts his passing while on the job, and how she had to go with family members to pick up his belongings and find his car, which had been towed away when he did not return to pick it up while covering his final story. Macdonald was very close to him, and the loss is almost overwhelming. Part of her own training is to learn to live with loss and grief. She recounts how her father taught her patience as the most important virtue. He tells her that one must be willing to stay still and wait for her moment, much like a piece of reindeer moss can survive “just about anything the world throws at it” and remain resilient. It is ironic that she finds herself staring at the moss when her mother informs her of her father’s passing. The life of an Astringer—a solitary trainer of goshawks and sparrowhawks—is a lonely one, and Macdonald describes her daily life and routines with Mabel in poetic and deeply harmonic language. The setting of the book is the Brecklands, a place known as the broken lands, and the area lives up to its name. She clings to the words of Marianne Moore: “The cure for loneliness is solitude.” She tells us she has learned to hold tight and survive, much like the security of the jesses, leather straps that bind the hawk to the Astringer. Her twin brother did not survive the difficult birth that brought Macdonald into the world. Macdonald is so good at distilling the wisdom she absorbs from training Mabel. She tells us there are two things she has learned about training hawks: the Astringer must learn to become invisible, and the way to a hawk’s heart is through positive reinforcement with food. Hawks are not social animals like dogs or horses. They are predators, and their predatory nature is bred in their bones. She equates training goshawks with “white-knuckle jobs” as described by her father. These are dangerous journalism assignments. Her father’s defense against the fear is to “look through the viewfinder” and stop being involved. Instead, become the witness. “All that exists is a square of finely ground glass and the world seen through it,” he tells her. His advice in stressful, dangerous situations is to be mindful of “exposure and depth of field and getting the shot you hope for.” Macdonald sees her father’s work in each photograph as “a record, a testament, a bulwark against forgetting, against nothingness, against death.” Rooted in her father’s philosophy is one that Macdonald also discovers in nature when training Mabel. The world is forever; we are only a blink in its course. Macdonald references Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great French street photographer, and his photographs of a decisive moment. A good photograph means being open to all life offers and in an intuitive moment, click the shutter to capture. If one misses the moment, it is gone forever. Our lesson is to live in that moment—no past, no future, only the here and now. Throughout the book, Macdonald’s writing is poetic and beautiful. She writes: “There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are.” She also does not neglect the mythological elements of hawks and falcons, one that has played out over millennia: in ancient shamanic traditions in Eurasian cultures, “hawks and falcons were seen as messengers between this world and the next.” Mabel comes into Helen Macdonald’s life right at a time of need, and in working with this intense and intelligent animal, she finds peace and purpose in her life. She illuminates a culture that most of us never experience: training a fierce and intense goshawk to hunt with her human counterpart. In the end, Macdonald comes to understand the overwhelming grief and loss inherent in this life. Her story is extraordinary and extraordinarily beautiful.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Although the author had previously published lesser books this publication marks her sudden ascendancy to #1 on the NY Times Bes
*by D***F on June 14, 2015*

When the title of this book first flashed across my Kindle screen I thought it would be another in Sue Grafton’s “alphabet series” of murder mysteries. But no, it is the highly acclaimed memoir of British author Helen MacDonald. “H is for Hawk” describes her experience as a falconer training a young northern goshawk (acciper gentilis) to hunt free from the fist in the countryside near Cambridge where she taught. The zooligical name of the bird belies its true nature - which is quite vicious - especially while in pursuit of prey. It is also the most difficult of hawks to train. Although the author had previously published lesser books this publication marks her sudden ascendancy to #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list for non-fiction. By profession a historian and teacher of English Ms MacDonald is also an accomplished falconer, having raised and trained many different kinds of hawk since her seemingly idyllic childhood. The sudden death of her father in the prime of his life while photographing on assignment catapults her into inconsolable grief. A momentous decision to raise and train a young goshawk abruptly changes the trajectory of her life. In this memoir covering less than one year in her life she describes in great detail one experience after another – from the initial acquisition of the bird to its first spring molting season. These experiences are colored by her intensely felt and palpable emotions. It is an account filled with numerous flashbacks to earlier events – not only in her life – but more significantly to the life experiences and writings of T.H. While. An earlier English writer he is probably best known for “The Sword in the Stone” and “The Once and Future King” – Arthurian fantasies which served as he basis of a popular Disney animation. Terence Hanley White was also the author of “Goshawk” – a memoir chronicling his disastrous relationship to a goshawk he raised and trained in the most inappropriate manner. While there are parallels between the two experiences – his and hers – they are vastly different in their outcomes. One might think that such a story could lead to a boring book – unless one were fascinated by the sport of falconry – which I certainly am not. While reading one is exposed to myriad details pertaining to hawks and falconry. However, the structure is skilfully pieced together and the writing is of the highest caliber. Ms MacDonald’s prose is both elegant and eloquent. The stages of her grief and her relationship with this bird – as well as the countryside – become tangible to a reader. Some would find it a depressing work – since clearly she has gone through – and seemingly recovered to some extent from – a deep state of depression. I did not find it depressing or boring to read. Though at times I wished – like some other reviewers – that she would eliminate many of the paraphrases of White’s text – I nevertheless found the brilliancy of the writing made up for these excursions.

### ⭐⭐⭐ Life with Mabel.
*by A***R on November 8, 2016*

Macdonald has written an interesting book. She has a story to tell and she has done a good job. The fact that the subject is not suspenseful, thrilling or moving is explained by the subject matter. The writer is a troubled person, she is going through a difficult time, grieving the loss of her father. I felt she was insightful to follow her dream at this time. It was a unique way of handling her grief, she didn't just curl onto a ball and sob. I admire her decision to get the bird, yet I don't think it served her well. Mentally she escaped into a more troubling lifestyle. The time, pressure and solitude it took to train her goshawk was not the best medicine. Yet she realized she was depressed and went for medication and treatment. Many people fail to take this necessary step. Macdonald's writing brought the hawk Mabel to life. I was with her every step as she trained, related, worried and loved her bird. I was only mildly interested in the parelle story of T H White and his failure as a goshawk owner. The story was slow to start and had too much data and history at the beginning. I nearly quit reading but finally got to the heart of the story. This subject is rare, therefore it held my interest and I learned a lot I have respect for the people who choose this way of life, it is not a hobby, it is much more . MacDonald regretted that she had no way to balance her one sided life with Mabel.

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*Last updated: 2026-05-02*