To Read & To Write

Read my first review of H is for Hawk at this link:  https://feliciareviewsbooks.blogspot.com/2019/09/h-is-for-hawk-by-helen-macdonald.html When I read H is for Hawk for the first time, I was mesmerized by the tale of a human coming into contact with something wild and violent, the hawk. I knew that she, writer Helen MacDonald, was different than others who've told this story in that her story was not about the capturing of a hawk for scientific purposes, but rather a story about the experience of making of a bridge between two worlds that coincide in reality: the first, that of civilization, the second, that of the wilderness. At first reading, I was fascinated by her hawk Mabel and the relationship she shared with her owner, a relationship that can only be called such because of immense amounts of patience, expertise and knowledge, compromise, and dedication. To take care of and gain the trust of any wild animal is difficult, but a hawk especially. This mesmerizing effect a...

The title is “H Is For Hawk” because, like in those children’s picture books in which C is for cat and M is for mouse (and on and on), the hawk is an animal. And the underlying question is *what, exactly, is a hawk*? What does it look like, what does it do, where does it come from, how does it live? In her novel “H Is For Hawk” (2014) Helen MacDonald writes about the field of falconry (her profession) and readers learn answers to those questions about hawks. Her narrative answers those questions in different ways. Partly through her uncanny fascination with the famous T.H. White (author of “The Once and Future King” and a lesser known book, “The Goshawk”) and her experiences while reclaiming her life after her father, her guiding light, suddenly passes. It is a goshawk, one of the deadliest kinds of hawk, she connects to afterwards: “There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that is not how it will be at...