Saw a chain of events so fast they snapped into a comic strip: frame, frame, frame. Experimentally, I opened the book at random to see if I could find a quote, and got this: “The hawk left the fist with the recoil of a.
Her poet’s language and falconer’s knowledge fuse into prose that says things no one else has. Unlike some wielders of critical theory, she knows the difference between real things and the meanings we invest in them as she said in her earlier book: “Pigeons have no illusions that falcons are merely empty signifiers filled with meaning by humans.” She is also a much-published poet, a critic, and a former lecturer in the history of science at Cambridge University. Helen is a competent falconer who has trained many birds, and has previously written a book about falcons. White, training her goshawk, her grief- are beautifully, inextricably braided. White’s 1951 classic, The Goshawk, which I once called “a book about excruciatingly bad falconry” but also added “the best book on falconry, its feel, its emotions, and its flavor, ever written.” H is for Hawk has better falconry, and ups the ante, weaving in another skein-her grief at the sudden death of her father. It is not only a bird book but a book about T. Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk is the best book on the goshawk yet, and may be the best on falconry from the inside.
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