Reviews
âIt sings. I couldnât
stop reading.â
âCaptivating and beautifully written, itâs a meditation on the bond between beasts and humans and the pain and beauty of being alive.â
âOne of the loveliest things youâll read this year.â
âMacdonaldâs first sight of her birdâŚis one of the most memorable passages Iâve read this year or, for that matter, this decade. The heat of the moment is enough to melt grammar.â
âMacdonaldâs beautiful and nearly feral bookâŚis so good that, at times, it hurt me to read it. It draws blood, in ways that seem curative.â
âHelen Macdonald has written a spectacular memoirâŚShe is also a marvelous narrator, evoking the open spaces of her Cambridge fields, the natural violence of a goshawkâs existence, and her crippling fear of mingling with society when she is so bereft. It is all there in her voice, along with a crisp English accent that is such a pleasure to listen toâŚShe slightly lowers her voice to distinguish Whiteâs story from her own journey out of sorrowful madness into a hopeful future. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.â
âA well-wrought book,
one part memoir, one part gorgeous evocation of the natural world, and one part
literary meditationâŚThe discovery of
the season.â
âA talon-sharp memoir
that will thrill and chill you to the boneâŚMacdonald has just the right blend
of the scientist and the poet, of observing on the one hand and feeling on the
other.â
âWhat [Macdonald] has
achieved is a very rare thing in literatureâa completely realistic account of a
human relationship with animal consciousnessâŚIt is a soaring performance, and Mabel
is the star.â
âA dazzling piece of
work: deeply affecting, utterly fascinating, and blazing with love and intelligenceâŚa
deeply human work shot through, like cloth of gold, with intelligence and
compassion.â
âExtends the boundaries of nature
writing. As a naturalist she has somehow acquired her birdâs laser-like visual
acuity. As a writer she combines a lexicographerâs pleasure in words as carefully
curated objects with an inventive passion for new words or for ways of
releasing fresh effects from the old stock.â
âIn
this profoundly inquiring and wholly enrapturing memoir, Macdonald exquisitely
and unforgettably entwines misery and astonishment, elegy and natural history,
human and hawk.â
âPoignant, thoughtful, and movingâand likely to become a classic.â
âUnexpectedly, Macdonald is an extraordinary, nuanced narrator, whose
elegant voice makes her eloquent prose even more affective.â
âMacdonald reads her own work in an emotionally resonant voice slightly reminiscent of Emma Thompsonâs. For readers who have difficulty tracking Macdonald through her multipronged memoir, her narration might be just the ticket.â
â[An] elegant synthesis of memoir and literary sleuthing.â
âA deep, dark
work of terrible beauty that will open fissures in the stoniest heartâŚMacdonald
is a survivorâŚshe has produced one of the most eloquent accounts of bereavement
you could hope to readâŚA grief memoir with wings.â
âThis beautiful book
is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration:
elegy for a father lost, celebration of a hawk foundâand in the finding also a
celebration of countryside, forbears of one kind and another, life-in-death. At
a time of very distinguished writing about the relationship between human kind
and the environment, it is immediately preeminent.â
âA book made from the
heart that goes to the heartâŚIt combines old and new nature and human nature
with great originality. No one who has looked up to see a bird of prey cross
the sky could read it and not have their life shifted.â
âA lovely touching book about a young woman grieving over the death of
her father becoming rejuvenated by training one of the roughest, most
difficult creatures in the heavens, the goshawk.â
âThe most magical
book I have ever read.â
âA work of great spirit and wonder, illuminated
equally by terror and desire. Each beautiful sentence is capable of
taking a readerâs breath. The book is built of feather and bone,
intelligence and blood, and a vulnerability so profound as to conjure
that vulnerabilityâs shadow, which is the great power of honesty. It is
not just a definitive work on falconry; it is a definitive work on
humanity and all that can and cannot be possessed.â
âOne of the yearâs most acclaimed books, Helen MacDonaldâs H Is for Hawk brings together a meditation on grief with observations on the natural world around us.â
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