H is for Hawk-Helen Macdonald Review

 I have heard about 'H is for Hawk' by Helen Macdonald quite some time ago, when one of my favorite contemporary authors, Lana Bastasic, recommended this novel is one of her interviews. Given how much I love Bastasic's work, I decided to put it on my TBR. In the meantime, I have also listened to a podcast with Macdonald where she talked about the inspiration behind this rather unusual novel and decided to finally buy it. However, despite the intriguing premise and author's undeniable talent, I cannot say I really enjoyed the experience of reading this book.

'H is for Hawk' is a memoir, following the sudden death of author's father and her decision to train goshawk, one of the most vicious predator among the birds. Macdonald is an experienced falconer , but she has never trained goshawk before, due to their rather feral and vicious nature. Still, in her grief, she sees herself in this wild animal. At the same time as her grief and the process of taming and training the animal is described, her analysis and thoughts about T.H. White's own written account of attempting to tame his own goshawk. Author goes into a lot of detail describing the nature and the outdoor surrounding her, which I really enjoyed as somebody who really needs to explore English countryside more.

In terms of plot, this novel does not have plenty of it. The main event is that of the passing of the author's father that she was close with and her inability to deal with grief. She provides sufficient background and explanations of her childhood to understand the seemingly bizarre decision to train a predator. Quite a lot of time is dedicated to the author's internal world, which given the topic at hand, made perfect sense. With that being said, I must say I did not fully understand the connection between her father's passing and getting a goshawk. On the basic level, I do understand, but why a goshawk and why now?

Additionally, I really do not understand the point of falconry. I am sure that those involved will have a better explanation as to the beauty and intricacy of this, but for me it just seems cruel and pointless. The bird in question is called Mabel and the author bought her from a breeder when she was essentially a newborn for the purpose of training her. Throughout the training of the bird, the author is consistently criticizing T.H. White's approach to training citing it as cruel, and she does allow Mabel to hunt and fly, but at the end of the day, that bird is completely dependent on humans. She is not an endangered species and the author is not really working on conserving the species, rather treats a wild animal as grief counselor. Maybe it is because I am not a falconer nor do I know too much about birds of prey in general, but despite so much time and details spent describing falconry, I simply did not see a point of it at all. At times, her attitude towards the bird that she willingly bought knowing full well it is a wild predator who will be extremely demanding, is terrifying as very often she admits she cannot handle Mabel. Upon research, I also found out that Mabel passed away before this book was published, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth as I feel like that should have been mentioned somewhere, somehow.

While I completely agree that grief is not linear or as the author herself points out, 'The archaeology of grief is not ordered', this felt too disjointed for me. Usually, I enjoy the mixing of genres and technical elements overall, but this one felt a bit directionless. On one hand, it is a grief memoir, but it is also about falconry, but also about nature preservation and also a criticism of historical attempts at falconry. This could be an attempt of reflecting the author's internal disjointing, but it was just too many moving pieces and parts of a story that never really come together. I kept trying to find a thorough line to connect all these aspects, but always came up short. Her father is mentioned here and there, but there was never an honest recollection of him or their relationship together, and judging by the immensity of her grief and the warm way she talks about him, I assumed they were really close. As much as the author tried to convince us of this, I never truly felt it, which was a bit underwhelming, especially for a book in which his death triggers her depression and manic behaviour.

In terms of writing style, Macdonald can truly bloody write. Her sentences are flowy and her vocabulary vast. But, maybe it was because of what I mentioned in the previous paragraph or because still style is not for me, I found it a bit tiring after a while. There are a lot of great thoughts and observations, but there was so many of them, I struggled to keep up. Some of them felt like there were just included because the author liked how they sounded, not because they added to the story much. To be completely honest, at times I rolled my eyes with how pretentious she can get and just skimmed through some passages I could not really get into. This made what could have been a powerful and honest exploration of one person's dealing with grief into a rather dull account of... I don't even know what. It was very self-indulgent.

The end seems underwhelming and the whole story unfinished. Maybe that is on purpose as grief, especially over someone that close, never truly leaves us, but it left me a bit disappointed. While there are so many wonderful elements to it, especially the relationship between the author and her father, there was so much I really did not enjoy or understand at all. This is such an interesting concept and I admire anyone who dares to put their heart and soul out on paper like Helen Macdonald did, but this memoir did not really convince me to change my mind about falconry or understand her grief process at all. Instead, it left me feeling confused and honestly a little angry about Mabel's faith and author's recklessness in treating her. I felt no sympathy for the main character or really felt like I knew her. For a novel that is a first and foremost a memoir and a narrative that the author can control, this felt like a let-down. At the end, I rated this 2/5 because of all the reasons I listed above. Did you read this book? Do you disagree with me? Let me know!

source:interactive.wttw.com/