REVIEWS OF H IS FOR HAWK

James's review of H is for Hawk

J IS FOR JFDI

Praise is lavished on H is for Hawk across literary journals and newspaper reviews, the story of the author’s journey through grief even claiming Costa Coffee’s book of the year award. It wasn’t clear to me for some time why.

The book charts the progression of Helen Macdonald’s bereavement partnered by a goshawk that she buys shortly after the death of her father. The decision to buy a bird of prey which we learn is notoriously hard to train seems kneejerk. It coincides with a failed relationship and impending loss of job and home. But the evolution of the relationship between the hawk and the subject, interspersed with reference to a parallel relationship between T. H. White and his goshawk, helps us understand her journey and ultimately her reconciliation with the world.

There are several aspects of the book that are however unsatisfying. At the core of this is her father. We never get to know her father which means we never understand her relationship with him and why she is grieving to such a degree. This for me removed the much needed heart and warmth the book needs. Her life is caught up in academia so throughout the book I’m wondering how come she has so much spare time and money? I must also confess that, after reading Shantaram, 900-odd pages of first person narrative, another first person perspective left me exhausted. Finally, the geek in me wanted to know much more about falconry, though any further such detail would have dramatically changed the book and reduced it.

So why the praise? Two reasons come to mind; firstly, that it is beautifully written. The prose is concise and graceful, with strong visual language and an aural acuity. Whether we’re at St Brides Church or in the Cambridgeshire countryside or in her home or in her head, there is a clarity and crispness to the writing that fills the pages with meaning.

And this brings me to the second reason – the weight of the writing and the introspection makes it a book for professional book reviewers.

2 ½ from me, average score from all is around 3.

JOE'S REVIEW

P is for potpourri, which is how I felt about this book.  As many authors change character perspectives to maintain interest and dramatic tension, Helen MacDonald changes from her perspective as a suffering, depressed woman to that of T.H. White (can we characerize him as a suffering, depressed man ?) to that of a nature writer. 

Of all of these perspectives I most liked the nature writing: factual, beautifully descriptive and capable of transporting one to the place and feeling of the scene.  You can imagine how it is to hold a hawk, watch a hawk, feel both the emotions of the hawk as it is drawn to and obiedient to you as well as the emotions of rejection and simply having the animal be oblivious to you.  She is also superb at transmitting and describing how the hawk must/probably sees the world and reacts to it.  This part of the book really broadened my (somewhat limited !) horizons- after all, I don’t think of hawks all too often.

The counterpoint to the excellent nature writing was the description of her depression and grief about the death of her father.  From what I read I couldn’t follow the depth of her attachment- there were brief descriptions of him alone, her interaction with him and his with others, but somehow I didn’t get to a feeling or understanding of why she was so grieved.  In a way, quite the opposite- I wanted almost to say “get on with it”, you’re young (I think), intelligent, have a Oxbridge degree, etc.  So….with the one side; i.e. the descriptive, emotive side of the cause of grieving not adequately described, I tended to think more of her as weak.

The elements of T.H. White and the hawk were transferrence – she was White, struggling to deal with a “hostile” world, she was the bird seeing the world that humans inhabit, but in a sense superior and oblivious to it.  The descriptions and content were interesting and partially compelling. 

It is pleasing that at the end, she did overcome both the notion that she was somehow both T.H. White and the hawk and realized that life goes on- within you and without you. 

The Hawk[1] don’t care.

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[1] Does she secretly wish that she were Kenny Harrelson ?

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Tom's review 

I initially gave "H is for Hawk" 3.5 stars on the strength of the writing style.  There is no doubt Helen MacDonald can wrap evocative imagery in a lyrical passage.  But I'm downgrading my rating to 2.5 stars because, after our JFDI discussion, I came away thinking she had written a book way too calculated to be a critical darling.  

If that was her goal, she nailed her landing, as critics can't seem to find enough ways to praise this book. For me, though, her self-image as an angst-ridden emo interwoven with a specialist subject (hawking) and a biography of an even more angst-ridden writer (T H White) feels like literary tick-boxing.  The loss she feels over her father's death comes off more overwrought than heartfelt, while her struggles with human love and financial ease seem manufactured to the point of indulgence.  In the end, the only despair I felt was for the awards the book world feels this memoir deserves.