H is for Hawk

There's so much going on in this book. Helen, a historian and falconry enthusiast, is grieving the death of her father. In her grief, she arranges to buy and train a goshawk. In the course of working with her hawk, she reflects on the life of T.H. White, the writer of The Once and Future King and another book, The Goshawk, which haunts her. There are the stories of her and her father, stories about T.H. White and his struggles, and the story of Helen and her hawk in the present. All of these are braided together in a memoir that is more than a memoir.

There is more than a little melodrama here. In a book where death and grief are so central, it's not surprising, but at times it was painful to read about the turmoil of T.H. White and then witness, in a way, the turmoil of Helen. Thankfully relief does come, along with some startling insights about the human relationship to the wild.

DNF at 25%.

This book is like a college paper. You have to write a certain number of pages but don't have enough material. You start to add unnecessary words just to make your page count. You ramble. You pull in random unrelated topics. You add fancy words to make it sound impressive.

That is this book. “I love gosshawks. Gosshawks** are beautiful. Gosshawks love to soar. They are hard to train. I collect books on gosshawks. T.H. White wrote a book on gosshawks. He was a sad confused man. Here's his whole life story. I'm including all of that to make my page count. He didn't know what he was doing with a hawk. I love gosshawks.... “ you get the point.

Yes, I see it's the author's way of coping over the loss of her father. I hope writing the book helped her get through it. Maybe she pulled herself free by the end of the book. This was just not the book for me.

** I listened to the audiobook version, so I'm uncertain of the true spelling of gosshawk. The audiobook narrator did a wonderful job. It was only due to her reading that I made it as far as I did.

I found Helen's writing style to be beautiful and loved hearing about the journey of grieving she went on while raising this Hawk. I found the described moments of grief to be deeply relatable for me and moving. And even cried at the very beginning of this book.

What really knocked down the enjoyment of this book for me was all the parts about White. Honestly I found all that talk about his books and how badly he raised his Hawk to be pretty boring and weird. Especially all that talk about his tortured life and repressed sexual feelings. I'm not really sure what that had to do with the authors personal story of grief or of raising a goshawk. I had to fight myself to keep from skipping his parts every time they came up.