Audiobook review of H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald – A Soaring Journey Through Grief | books

IIt has been up to 12 years since the publication of H Is for Hawk, about the time historian, writer and naturalist Helen MacDonald spent training a Eurasian goshawk after an intense period of grief. The book, which won awards, was a huge success and sparked a literary trend for transformative encounters shared with animals including cats, dogs, magpies and hares.

This month, H Is for Hawk comes to the big screen in a new film adaptation starring Claire Foy. But there is still time to familiarize yourself with the source material, which tells of the sudden death of the author’s father and how MacDonald, an experienced falconer who had previously trained kestrels and peregrines, took in a temperamental young goshawk named Mabel with the aim of taming her and teaching her to hunt. MacDonald, who is non-binary, is the audiobook’s narrator. Their reading is marked by introspection, curiosity and flashes of humor as they observe this “pale-eyed psychopath” who, in addition to eating and flying, likes to play ball with pieces of crumpled paper.

H Is for Hawk intersperses the author’s and their companion’s adventures with excerpts from the autobiography of T.H. White, whose book The Goshawk chronicled his own attempts to train a bird in the 1930s using old and cruel methods. Unsurprisingly, MacDonald does the best job and their account of their relationship with the goshawk, which helps mitigate a sadness that seems close to madness, is deeply affecting. Although sections in White sidetrack, it is in evoking the life and personality of this extraordinary bird of prey that MacDonald’s prose truly soars.

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