When Helen Macdonalds father dies unexpectedly on a London street, she is overcome with grief. This is to be expected, however Macdonalds form of coping with this grief is anything by traditional.
Macdonald is a falconer – a person who trains or hunts with birds of prey. As the title of the book suggests, the bird of prey that Macdonald goes out to train is a goshawk. Macdonalds particular goshawk is named Mabel. As Macdonald trains Mabel, she also explores the work of another falconer; T. H. White, a writer most well known for his novels that, published together are called The Once and Future King.
In short, H is for Hawk is quite the complex memoir, despite its numerous topics that center around training a goshawk the overarching theme that runs through this book is how a person dealing with a lot of grief due to loss attempts to deal with it. Mabel becomes Macdonalds tool for handling – or at least distracting her from – the loss of her father.
At times when reading this book I felt that Macdonald had taken on too much between the T. H. White analysis, the falconry and the death of her father. I spent much of the time reading this wondering how Macdonald was going to tie up all of these topics – and after finishing up the book I do wonder if she had.
This is one of those books that becomes easier to like IF you can relate to the type of grief that Macdonald is experiencing. The dark, bleak atmosphere that is set in this memoir can be off=putting if you as a reader don’t have a relateable experience. This is a book that isn’t for everyone, the writing and the story is superb, but liking or disliking the book may largely depend on whether you have the ability to relate to the emotions that Macdonald writes about.
Her memories in this memoir revolve around person’s, places and things. This is an aspect of this memoir that I found particularly fascinating. Many memoirs tend to focus on interactions with people, pets or places the author has been, however Smith recognizes that objects often hold with them the memories that we associate with them. In M Train one of those objects is a novel by Haruki Murakami that captures Smith’s imagination to the point that it influences her travels.
This book is filled with many things – writing prompts, quotes from authors, short biographies of writers, suggestions for books to read, writing tips and advice from various writers on writing. Since I read this book over the course of a year, what this book also has within it are the many memories – both good and bad – that I’ve accumulated during my first year at my house.
The introductory story titled Homeless begins with a man named Tomas in the year 1904 who is presented with a the Biblical Job-like predicament. His wife, child and father all die within a few days of each other and in protest to this divine injustice Tomas begins to walk backwards. In Tomas’ possession however he has an old diary that speaks of a religious artifact that, according to the diary will upturn religion as it is known. Tomas sets out on a quest, using the latest marvel of his age, and automobile to find this holy relic that is spoken of in the diary. The relic is a crucifix with a chimpanzee.
This past weekend I was able to finally read this book and I was happy that I did. I do believe that when my dad is finally able to finish it, he’ll enjoy this magical story as much as I did.