“H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald – A Falconer's Grief

Grief is something that touches us all in different ways, and there is no way of predicting how one will react to the loss of a loved one.

When it came to Helen Macdonald, probably few could predict what she decided to do in the wake of her father's sudden passing in the streets of London; she decided to raise one of the deadliest and most vicious predators, the goshawk.

Even though she was already an experienced falconer, she knew that this journey wouldn't prove to be a usual one and test her in many ways... and she wrote a memoir of it titled H is for Hawk.

At first, the premise of developing a relationship with an animal may sound like a cutesy premise that would give way to lots of comical moments and whatnot. In this case though, things turn out quite differently, mainly because taming wild animals is on the other side of the spectrum from training house pets.

The goshawk is a wild and fierce predator who doesn't want to be your friend... on the contrary, it is the person who must penetrate the animal's world and see it through their eyes. And that's precisely the kind of journey Macdonald set out on.

As you can imagine, Macdonald takes great care in introducing us to her world of falconry, but does so without glamorizing or romanticizing anything. Instead, she shows the sometimes cold and brutal truths of her world, one where predators devour prey without mercy or quarter.

Perhaps the only source of fluff in the book are the new-born chicks we get to see from time to time... until of course they become the goshawk's (named Mabel, by the way) food.

Despite all of her experience, taming Mable proves to be a challenge that drives her quite deep within herself, demanding a lot of patience, nerves, and an iron-clad determination.

Goshawk

Of course, as much as this is a book about hawks and taming them, it is also about grief, and how it affects a person. For Macdonald, the goshawk was a perfect mirror of the internal world she was left with when her father passed away: a domain stripped of wants and emotions, with only the basic necessities that separate us between life and death remaining.

On some level, the struggle to tame the hawk is a representation of man's constant struggle with their own nature, whether they are trying to mold it into something different or accept it for what it is.

Certain parts of the narrative are also dedicate to a rather important work from Macdonald's past, titled The Goshawk by TH White. She shares her thoughts on the man's seemingly cruel and crude approach at taming the hawk, but also notes how with time she saw it is much more than a book about raising birds... she saw it as the struggle of a scarred man trying to tame himself.

In the end, H is for Hawk is a complex and multilayered book that is much more than it appears to be at first sight. An epic struggle to tame a wild creature as well as one's own nature and a sorrowful account of the devastating effects of grief, this book is certainly one that will resonate with many. A very powerful read that will stay with you for some time.

---

Helen Macdonald Helen Macdonald is an English naturalist, Affiliated Research Scholar at the University of Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy of Science, as well as an author. Her best-known work is without a doubt H is for Hawk, which won her the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize as well as the Costa Book Award.