Slowly we see that only by facing death head-on – understanding its makings, its fearful symmetry, its oracular composition – can the author acquire the means to overcome its handiwork. As she overcomes death, death incarnate comes to be the grieving author’s companion. At one point in the book Macdonald plays rabbit sounds on the radio and the bird instantly awakes from deep sleep, ready pounce. Macdonald describes her, amongst other things, as a ‘creature with baleful eyes and death in her foot’. Now, the goshawk – adeptly and convincingly profiled in the book – is an agent of death. To overcome her crushing grief, she adopts a goshawk. Imagine this: the writer has just lost her parent. It must have been the kind of book that came with preternatural force, stood with a club in its hands over the author and forced them to scribble away. It is powerful and transcendent, and you can tell that Macdonald wrote from the heart. H is for Hawk is a lightning bolt of a book. I am not one of those who say they wish they wrote another person’s book, but when I think of Helen Macdonald’s memoir about the goshawk, I find myself thinking that she’s written the kind of book I’ve always wanted to write.
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