Description

Discover the memoir that inspired the major new film starring Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson

The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.

An instant international bestseller and prize-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald’s story of adopting and raising a goshawk has soared into the hearts of millions of readers. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel’s temperament mirrors Helen’s own state of grief after her father’s death, and together raptor and human discover the pain and beauty of being alive.

H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying masterpiece on grief, memory, taming and untaming, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.

‘An absolute classic of nature writing’ Guardian
‘It just sings. I couldn’t stop reading’ Mark Haddon
‘One of the best grief books ever written’ Cariad Lloyd

Publisher Review

A soaring triumph. -- Christian House * Daily Telegraph * Mesmerising, decisive and devastating... Her description of Mabel in flight should be etched into every birdwatcher's field guide... Macdonald is a nature writer supreme, arguably the best practitioner of this art form writing today. -- Stuart Winter * Sunday Express * A talon-sharp memoir that will thrill and chill you to the bone... Fascinating. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * People talk about books that change your life. I loved the fact that this book does something much more valuable. It doesn't change anything. It leaves everything just where it was, only more so; more distinct, more itself. It opens your eyes. And it deepens what we have always known; that we live side by side with each other, as we do with the creatures around us. -- Laura Beatty * Caught by the River * Astounding. * Bookseller * Absorbing... This memoir is lit with flashes of that grace, a grace that sweeps down to the reader to hold her wrist tight with beautiful, terrible class. The discovery of the season. -- Erica Wagner * The Economist * A wondrous book of loss and recovery... When [Macdonald] matches her factual know-how...with her poet's eye, it is excellent... An exceptional book of twisted growth. -- Tim Dee * National * Cunningly plaited and - almost - devastating... It deserves to sell shedloads and win prizes, it is naturalist writing of that spectacular quality that is literature too. -- Angus Clarke * The Times * What she has achieved is a very rare thing in literature - a completely realistic account of a human relationship with animal consciousness... It is a soaring performance and Mabel is the star. -- John Carey * Sunday Times * One of the most eloquent accounts of bereavement you could hope to read... A grief memoir with wings. -- Caroline Sanderson * Bookseller * MacDonald's prose is poetic, forensic, yet often capable of quickening the pulse. Her lexicon...is vivid and joyous, soaring as freely as birds do. -- Benjamin Myers * New Scientist * It is a mark of Macdonald's achievement that so exultant a book can resolve itself in a sense of failure, yet leave the reader as uplifted as a raptor riding on a thermal. -- Philip Hoare * New Statesman * Nature-writing, but not as you know it. Astounding. * Bookseller * Captivating... There is a highly polished brilliance to her writing. The English-speaking world has an old passion for books about creatures and captivating companions ... Helen Macdonald looks set to revive the genre. -- Guardian * Mark Cocker * [Macdonald's] descriptive writing, startlingly and devilishly precise...is only the half of it. She has written her taming of Mabel like a thriller, slowly and carefully cranking the tension is that your stomach and heart leap queasily towards each other... Captivates. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * I can't remember the last time a book made me feel so many different things in such quick succession. -- Rachel Cooke * Guardian * I'm convinced it's going to be an absolute classic of nature writing. -- Nick Barley * Guardian * H is for Hawk is a dazzling piece of work: deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love and intelligence... The result is a deeply human work shot through...with intelligence and compassion... I will be surprised if a better book than H is for Hawk is published this year. -- Melissa Harrison * Financial Times * This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration: elegy for a father lost, celebration of a hawk found - and in the finding also a celebration of countryside, forbears of one kind and another, life-in-death. At a time of very distinguished writing about the relationship between human kind and the environment, it is immediately pre-eminent. -- Andrew Motion It just sings. I couldn't stop reading. -- Mark Haddon