H is for Hawk

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER **WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR** **WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION** As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for GBP800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals. H is for Hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald’s struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk’s taming and her own untaming. This is a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.

Reviews of H is for Hawk

"It just sings. I couldn't stop reading." — Mark Haddon "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 "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 "I'm convinced it's going to be an absolute classic of nature writing." — Nick Barley Guardian "I can't remember the last time a book made me feel so many different things in such quick succession." — Rachel Cooke Guardian