Read of the Week: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

A Read of the Week from Megg, North West People and Projects Manager, who recommends H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald.

This is a book that had me completely in it, absorbed and not wanting it to end; the sort of book that as it ends I find myself experiencing a mild form of grief, like the loss that occurs at the end of an important relationship.

The book is written after the sudden death of the author’s father. Helen Macdonald deals with her grief by buying and training a goshawk that she names Mabel.  Helen wishes she could be like Mabel “solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life”.

Part memoir, part biography, part manual (on birds of prey) and totally brilliant.

“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 realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps” - Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk