* * * * *
Soaring through the sky, basking with the sun upon her feathered back, Mabel surveys the city of Cambridge. The spires of King’s College Chapel rise to the grey sky above, broken only by the preying goshawk.
Photocredit: The Skinny
Helen Macdonald’s images are so vivid it is impossible not
to see Mabel, her goshawk, flying across the fields that surround Cambridge. H is for Hawk filled me with an intense
desire to fly with my own goshawk. To run beneath its underbelly and imagine just for a moment that I too am soaring weightlessly
through the air.
A desire to fly is not new to
humans. For centuries we have been fascinated by flying creatures, inventing
dragons and creating our own flying contraptions, but for me it has always
remained an abstract idea. When I get on a plane I don't think about how it’s holding
me in the air, how carefully balanced that steel cylinder has to be
in order to stay aloft, because, for me, flying remains a magical idea, a dream
of dragons. As I watch the swarms of swallows perform their elegant dance south
every autumn, I can’t quite believe it’s not rehearsed.
Photocredit: The Times
H is for Hawk retains
a mystical aura as Macdonald learns to read Mabel and interpret her mood from
small shifts in her feathers and slight tensions in her claws. The connection
between goshawk and falconer is deeper even than that between man and dog and
Mabel comes to represent a part of Macdonald, her familiar. The connection
between Helen and Mabel may at times seem otherworldly, but readers are soon
reminded that Mabel is not a dragon, she is an animal: vicious, bloodthirsty
and without loyalty. Macdonald succumbs to the age old human desire to impose
human characteristics upon her pet; however, the by the end of the novel it is
clear she remembers who and what Mabel is.
H is for Hawk is
beautifully written. Macdonald’s prose is pretty without being ornate and
succinct without being sparse. She writes intimately of a time when she needed
help, when her Dad had suddenly died and her life was uncertain and unstable.
Helen turns to Mabel as a distraction, a reminder that her
childhood dreams can be realised and so that she can remember those
days spent happily watching birds of prey with her father.
Photocredit: BBC
His for Hawk is
one of the most enjoyable works of non-fiction I have ever had the pleasure of
reading. Readers follow Macdonald on her journey through
grief and uncertainty and learn a good deal about England’s hawking history along
the way. The repeated references to White and past falconers add an interesting
dimension, comparing our current century to the golden age of falconers in the
16th century. Undeniably, falconry has a reputation for being
popular amongst the upper classes, but this urban hawk, Mabel, has shown me
that anyone can study hawking and, with patience, learn to fly them. Nevertheless, I’m
not sure that my soppy black lab would cope very well with a hawk perched above
his bed.
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