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Recovery
The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.
How do we carry on when someone close to us dies? Is it simply a case of putting one foot in front of the other in a bleak new world or do we need something more? Reeling with grief after the sudden death of her father, Helen Macdonald found herself turning to the wild for comfort. With breathtaking honesty and insight, she recounts her months spent taming a goshawk and how, finally, this strange kinship led her to the first tentative steps to recovery.
Selected from H is for Hawk
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human.
Discover the Vintage Minis ‘Head Space’ series:
Therapy by Stephen Grosz
Family by Mark Haddon
How do we carry on when someone close to us dies? Is it simply a case of putting one foot in front of the other in a bleak new world or do we need something more? Reeling with grief after the sudden death of her father, Helen Macdonald found herself turning to the wild for comfort. With breathtaking honesty and insight, she recounts her months spent taming a goshawk and how, finally, this strange kinship led her to the first tentative steps to recovery.
Selected from H is for Hawk
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human.
Discover the Vintage Minis ‘Head Space’ series:
Therapy by Stephen Grosz
Family by Mark Haddon
- GenresNonfiction
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 4, 2019
2 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Helen Macdonald
31 books1,681 followersHelen Macdonald is a writer, poet, and naturalist. They are the author of the bestselling H Is for Hawk and Vesper Flights along with Shaler’s Fish, a history of falconry, and two other books of poetry. They've written and presented award-winning TV documentaries for PBS and the BBC. Prophet is their first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 2, 2019
Beautiful and brutal.
Could relate to the idea of trying to get back to yourself, and searching for a sense of place and belonging when your world has been turned upside down.
Could relate to the idea of trying to get back to yourself, and searching for a sense of place and belonging when your world has been turned upside down.
June 30, 2020
Still one of my favorite pieces of nature writing/memoir. Essentially the same as H is for Hawk, but in short form. Really looking forward to Helen Macdonald’s new collection of essays out in August.
June 21, 2024
3.8!!!!
September 15, 2021
Life is way too short to read books that are this shitty
January 5, 2021
I read this without realising it was an excerpt from H is for Hawk, which was on my wantlist. Personal, without ever being indulgent, this text has many beautfiul, stuck-in-your-throat moments. The book is at its most interesting when MacDonald discusses how our engagement with nature and our environment interacts or crosses paths with politics - the personal is of course political but this book made me realise how charged with meaning and history (and often prejudice) our assumptions about the British landscape can be. MacDonald is a woman who seems to cross many contradicting worlds; one sort of ends up suspecting she'd make the most interesting of all possible dinner party guests. Her feature length BBC documentary The Hidden Wilds of the Motorway is also fantastic. I'm looking forward to reading her essay collection V for Vespers - I understand this has fox hunting as a central theme; I'm looking forward to hearing MacDonald's thoughts on this. I've always been viscerally opposed to it but I've not come away from this book with a similar reaction to falconry, which surely shares many parallels.
January 14, 2021
Reflections and lessons learned:
Noteworthy, associative lines:
“She is jumpy, fractious, unsociable”
“When you are broken, you run”
“Hold tight” - a phrase that I often say to myself, and has been much repeated during peaks within the pandemic
I’ve looked at the cover of h for hawk many times, intrigued, but not actually read, or even had the knowledge to recognise that this book was even by the same author. Sceptical for the first part as to whether something so specific about falconry, that had never been on my radar (tenuous bird of prey joke?), could be of interest. However, the writing and weaving of the story between the two main themes of life cycle and grief were just too raw not to want to read on. Beautifully written can be a cliche but this, as a story without, for me, a personal context on either front, was just that. A life narrative that deserves attention for its honesty. I read this with very low phone battery but it couldn’t feel rushed.
Do I feel the need to still read h for hawk... not sure, but there maybe a better time for it in my life
Noteworthy, associative lines:
“She is jumpy, fractious, unsociable”
“When you are broken, you run”
“Hold tight” - a phrase that I often say to myself, and has been much repeated during peaks within the pandemic
I’ve looked at the cover of h for hawk many times, intrigued, but not actually read, or even had the knowledge to recognise that this book was even by the same author. Sceptical for the first part as to whether something so specific about falconry, that had never been on my radar (tenuous bird of prey joke?), could be of interest. However, the writing and weaving of the story between the two main themes of life cycle and grief were just too raw not to want to read on. Beautifully written can be a cliche but this, as a story without, for me, a personal context on either front, was just that. A life narrative that deserves attention for its honesty. I read this with very low phone battery but it couldn’t feel rushed.
Do I feel the need to still read h for hawk... not sure, but there maybe a better time for it in my life
June 15, 2019
Sometimes beautiful, most of the time couldn't relate.
Ever since starting this book, hawks of all sorts have started appearing in various places, rather uncanny.
Ever since starting this book, hawks of all sorts have started appearing in various places, rather uncanny.
October 29, 2019
The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.
February 11, 2024
I was looking forward to reading this one, I really thought it would be a deep dive in how Helen dealt with her grief but all I go was her learning about falconry… yawn 🥱
August 10, 2022
This beautiful little read brings a beautiful light to falconry and the countryside
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews