H is for Hawk

H is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald

This book is about Macdonald dealing with the sudden death of her father by leaving academia to train a goshawk. This book is also part biography of T.H. White, and according to Macdonald part nature writing.

 

It just didn’t really work for me, and I feel bad about that. I really struggle to rate and review memoirs because it’s someone’s real life and eh, I just struggle. This one though is really easy for me to identify why I didn’t like it. I felt like there was too much in this book. I felt like the nature writing and biography bits took diminished Macdonald’s voice. Macdonald has said she tried to let all these elements of the story be their own things but for me it just made it feel muddy and disjointed even though I could see why she brought White into the story but it still just didn’t work for me. Also maybe because of my own feelings on having birds as pets I feel like I lacked the base interest for a book about falconry, though objectively I can say that it’s amazing.