After her father died, Helen Macdonald seemed to die a little too. A naturalist and historian, she was completing her research fellowship at a university in England when her father’s unexpected death throws her off course, overwhelmed by her fierce and intractable emotions. “The archeology of grief,” she finds, “is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.”

Slowly she cuts herself off from her family and friends, unable to cope, until one day she comes across her old copy of T. H. White’s Goshawk which she had loved as a child and instilled in her a love for falconry. She had embraced that world with its esoteric words and conventions, claiming for herself a place in its historic and arcane relationship between humans and birds of prey. She had even trained sparrow hawks and falcons as she grew older and hunted with them, but the goshawk was the prize-the ultimate test in falconry circles, because they were so notoriously difficult. And so, Helen decides that the only way to get over her grief is to train a goshawk.

The goshawk she orders arrives off the ferry in Scotland where Helen has driven to pick it up. She puts the large box containing the goshawk in car and takes it home where she really sees it for the first time. ” In the half light through the drawn curtains she sits on her perch, relaxed, hooded, extraordinary. Formidable talons, wicked, curved black beak, sleek cafe-au-lait front streaked thickly with cocoa-colored tear drops, looking for all the world like some cappuccino samurai,” and decides to name her Mabel.

Weaving together the story of T. H. White’s difficult and devastating experience in training his goshawk, with reflections about her father, as well as her own experiences in training Mabel, we begin to see the complicated terrain of claiming what is human in the face of that which is not human and wild.

Although this is ostensibly a book about training a goshawk, it is in reality a book about confronting and dealing with grief and loss. The goshawk and Helen’s training of it is in essence a metaphor on how we come to terms with that ultimate wild, untameable inevitable thing called Death. Helen rails against its unexpected intrusion into her life just as the goshawk rails against its training and loss of freedom.  Helen’s extraordinary journey, the incredible insights she shares about the natural world, the interactions she shares about Mabel and her unflinching honesty about her devastating grief make this one of the most profound and touching non-fiction books I have read in quite some time and no wonder it was on everyone’s short list as a “best book” in 2015!

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Keith, Ken, Marian, Lauren and Sharon.

Book Study Worthy? YES

Read in ebook format.

The Great Natural Drama, an interview with Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk