The Book: When Helen Macdonald's beloved father unexpectedly dies of a heart attack Helen tries to deal with her grief by raising and training a goshawk that she names Mabel. Helen is an experienced falconer but goshawks are known to be very difficult to train. Helen tells of her successes and failures both in training Mabel and in dealing with her grief. Her memories of her father, who seems to have been a lovely man, are strewn throughout the memoir. She also evaluates previous writings about the training of goshawks especially a memoir by T.H. White (the author of The Sword in the Stone). Unlike Helen, T.H. White had no experience and made a mess of his attempt to train a goshawk but despite that Helen is drawn to the memoir and compares her own experience with White's experience. By the end of the year Helen has learned much about Mabel and about herself.
The Author: Helen Macdonald
Genre: Non-fiction (memoir)
Length: 387 pp (e-book on my mini ipad)
One good thing: This beautifully written memoir reads more like a novel than most memoirs.
One not-so-great thing: There really isn't anything not great about this book but I suppose if you are completely uninterested in either birds, woods or T.H. White you might be a bit bored with parts of it.
Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways": Although this is a memoir, it reads like a novel so I feel it is appropriate to discuss this.
Story: Obviously, since this is a memoir, the story is dependent upon reality. And yet there is a story arc as Helen trains Mabel and moves through her own grief. This is not a page-turner but a book to be read slowly and savored.
Characters: Because of her grief, for much of the book Helen has mostly withdrawn into a world that is just she and Mabel. But she makes Mabel a character without anthropomorphizing her. I definitely ended the book wanting more of both Helen and Mabel.
Setting: Most of the book is spent in the woods and fields of England in and around Cambridge. It's nice to read a book set in this locale that isn't about the university.
Writing: This is a beautifully written book. All of the information about birds, especially goshawks, could have been very dry but isn't. And all of the information about White could have been seen as a distraction from the main story but instead is well integrated into Helen's story.
