H is for Hawk: The Sunday Times bestseller and Costa and Samuel Johnson Prize Winner
Helen Macdonald
Discover the number one bestselling phenomenon that is a powerful and profound mediation on grief expressed through the trials of training a goshawk.
**WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR**
** WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION**
As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.
H is for Hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. This is a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.
**SELECTED BY CARIAD LLOYD ON BBC TWO'S BETWEEN THE COVERS**
'This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration' Andrew Motion
'It just sings. I couldn't stop reading' Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
'Dazzling... Deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love and intelligence' Financial Times
Product Details
About Helen Macdonald
Reviews for H is for Hawk: The Sunday Times bestseller and Costa and Samuel Johnson Prize Winner
Andrew Motion I'm convinced it's going to be an absolute classic of nature writing.
Nick Barley
Guardian
I can't remember the last time a book made me feel so many different things in such quick succession.
Rachel Cooke
Guardian
Nature-writing, but not as you know it. Astounding.
Bookseller
Astounding.
Bookseller
A talon-sharp memoir that will thrill and chill you to the bone... Fascinating.
Craig Brown
Mail on Sunday
A soaring triumph.
Christian House
Daily Telegraph
Beautiful.
Sport
Vivid and fascinating.
James Attlee
Independent
Soars beyond genres, and burns with emotional and intellectual intensity.
Nature
A soliloquy that sings from the pages. Truly beautiful.
Rufus the Hawk
Heartbreaking.
Grazia
Macdonald makes nature writing new.
For Books Sake
Unusual and incredibly moving.
Twin Magazine
A masterpiece.
Metro
Patricia Nicol
Never has the eye of a raptor assumed such fearful, beautiful meaning.
Philip Hoare
New Statesman
Big-hearted, joyful and blazing with gorgeous descriptions of nature, H is for Hawk is an unusual but very special memoir.
Good Housekeeping
Lyrical, headlong, humourous.
Iain Finlayson
New Statesman
As phenomenal, unusual, moving and agile as a fearsome bird of prey.
Monocle
An elegant, disturbing and heart-warming book.
Wharfedale Observer