Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of the bestselling H Is for Hawk, as well as a cultural history of falcons, titled Falcon, and three collections of poetry, including Shaler's Fish. Macdonald was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a professional falconer, and has assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She now writes for the New York Times Magazine. Twitter: @HelenJMacdonald
* Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
* Shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction
* Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Award in Nonfiction
* The Costa Book of the Year
* Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize "Breathtaking . . . Helen
Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor's fierce
essence--and her own--with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly
pretty we don't notice their astonishing engineering." --Vicki
Constantine Croke, New York Times Book Review (cover review) "Helen
Macdonald's beautiful and nearly feral book, H Is for Hawk, reminds
us that excellent nature writing can lay bare some of the
intimacies of the wild world as well. Her book is so good that, at
times, it hurt me to read it. It draws blood, in ways that seem
curative. . . . [An] instant classic." --Dwight Garner, New York
Times "Extraordinary . . . indelible . . . [it contains] one of the
most memorable passages I've read this year, or for that matter
this decade . . . Mabel is described so vividly she becomes almost
physically present on the page." --Lev Grossman, TIME "Captivating
and beautifully written, it's a meditation on the bond between
beasts and humans and the pain and beauty of being alive." --People
(Book of the Week) "One of the loveliest things you'll read this
year . . . You'll never see a bird overhead the same way again."
--Jason Sheeler, Entertainment Weekly "[A] singular book that
combines memoir and landscape, history and falconry . . . it is not
like anything I've ever read . . . what Macdonald tells us so
eloquently in her fine memoir [is] that transformation of our
docile or resigned lives can be had if we only look up into the
world." --Susan Straight, Los Angeles Times "Had there been an
award for the best new book that defies every genre, I imagine it
would have won that too. . . . Coherent, complete, and riveting,
perhaps the finest nonfiction I read in the past year." --Kathryn
Schulz, New Yorker "The art of Macdonald's book is in the way that
she weaves together various kinds of falling apart--the way she
loops one unraveling thread of meaning into another. . . . What's
lovely about [it] is the clarity with which she sees both the inner
and outer worlds that she lives in." --Caleb Crain, New York Review
of Books "One of the most riveting encounters between a human being
and an animal ever written." --Simon Worrall, National Geographic
"Assured, honest and raw . . . a soaring wonder of a book."
--Daneet Steffens, Boston Globe "An elegantly written amalgam of
nature writing, personal memoir, literary portrait and an
examination of bereavement. . . . It illuminates unexpected things
in unexpected ways." --Guy Gavriel Kay, Washington Post "To
categorize this work as merely memoir, nature writing or spiritual
writing would understate [Macdonald's] achievement . . . her prose
glows and burns." --Karin Altenberg, Wall Street Journal
"Dazzling." --Kate Guadagnino, Vogue "Unsparing, fierce . . . a
superior accomplishment. There's not a line here that rings false;
every insight is hard won . . . Macdonald has found the ideal
balance between art and truth." --David Laskin, Seattle Times "One
of the best books about nature that I've ever read. Macdonald's
wonderful gift for language and her keen observations bring
pleasure to every page." --Karen Sandstrom, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"[With] sumptuously poetic prose . . . there is deft interplay
between agony and ecstasy, elegy and rebirth, wildness and
domesticity, alongside subtle reminders about the cruelty of nature
and our necessary faith in humanity." --Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis
Star Tribune "One of a kind . . . Macdonald is a poet, her language
rich and taut. . . . As she descends into a wild, nearly mad
connection with her hawk, her words keep powerful track. . . .
[She] brings her observer's eye and poet's voice to the universal
experience of sorrow and loss." --Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune
"A heart-poundingly good read." --Helen W. Mallon, Philadelphia
Inquirer "Incandescent . . . glorious, passionate, and
heartbreaking." --Sy Montgomery, Orion "A triumph." --Nick
Willoughby, Salon "The hawk-book's form is perfect. It prickles
your skin the way nature can when you are surprised by an animal in
your path. Some books are not books but visitations, and this one
has crossed its share of thresholds before arriving here, to an
impossible middle perch between wilderness and culture, past and
present, life and death." --Katy Waldman, Slate "A genre-busting
dazzler of a book, worthy of the near-universal accolades that it's
received so far." --Elisabeth Donnelly, Flavorwire "Extraordinary .
. . Macdonald elegantly weaves multitudinous and extremely complex
issues into a single work of seamless prose." --Lucy Scholes, The
Daily Beast "The echoes of myth in Macdonald's writing, however
subtle and unobtrusive, lend her book an emotional weight usually
reserved only for literature, and a grace only for poetry. But this
is one of the book's great achievements: to belong to several
genres at once, and to succeed at all of them." --Madeleine Larue,
The Millions "[Macdonald's] writing--about soil and weather, myth
and history, pain and its slow easing--retains the qualities of
[her hawk] Mabel's wild heart, and the commanding scope and
piercing accuracy of her hawk's eye." --Joanna Scutts, Newsday
"Brutal yet redemptive . . . a real stunner." --Alexis Burling, The
Oregonian "Gorgeous." --Diane Rehm, The Diane Rehm Show "A wonder
both of nature and of meditative writing." --Maureen Corrigan,
Fresh Air with Terry Gross "To read Helen Macdonald's new memoir is
to have every cell of your body awake and alive." --Robin Young,
Here and Now "In this profoundly inquiring and wholly enrapturing
memoir, Macdonald exquisitely and unforgettably entwines misery and
astonishment, elegy and natural history, human and hawk." --Donna
Seaman, Booklist (starred review) "An inspired, beautiful and
absorbing account of a woman battling grief--with a goshawk. . . .
Writing with breathless urgency . . . Macdonald broadens her scope
well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and
the environment. Whether you call this a personal story or nature
writing, it's poignant, thoughtful and moving--and likely to become
a classic in either genre." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A
unique and beautiful book with a searing emotional honesty, and
descriptive language that is unparalleled in modern literature."
--Costa Book Award citation "H is for Hawk is a work of great
spirit and wonder, illuminated equally by terror and desire. Each
beautiful sentence is capable of taking a reader's breath. The book
is built of feather and bone, intelligence and blood, and a
vulnerability so profound as to conjure that vulnerability's
shadow, which is the great power of honesty. It is not just a
definitive work on falconry; it is a definitive work on humanity,
and all that can and cannot be possessed." --Rick Bass "A lovely
touching book about a young woman grieving over the death of her
father becoming rejuvenated by training one of the roughest, most
difficult creatures in the heavens, the goshawk." --Jim Harrison
"In addition to being an excellent memoir of loss and grief, H is
for Hawk is a wonderful exploration of how birds of prey can
function as metaphor to produce art and a roadmap for human lives.
Read it and enrich your life." --Dan O'Brien "Rich with the poetry
of ideation, the narrative flows through the author's deeply
textured story of personal loss like a mountain wind, swirling
seamlessly through fields of literature, biology, natural history,
and the art of hunting with hawks. Readers might do well to absorb
this book a bite at a time--but be prepared for a full meal."
--Lynn Schooler "A beautiful book on so many levels. Macdonald
fearlessly probes each facet of grief and traverses its wilderness
to reach redemption. But most beautiful of all is the complex,
layered bond that builds between her and Mabel, her hawk. Who would
have guessed that human and bird could share so much?" --Jan
DeBlieu "In this elegant synthesis of memoir and literary sleuthing
. . . Macdonald describes in beautiful, thoughtful prose how she
comes to terms with death in new and startling ways." --Publishers
Weekly "A dazzling piece of work: deeply affecting, utterly
fascinating and blazing with love . . . a deeply human work shot
through, like cloth of gold, with intelligence and compassion--an
exemplar of the mysterious alchemy by which suffering can be
transmuted into beauty. I will be surprised if a better book than H
is for Hawk is published this year." --Melissa Harrison, Financial
Times "More than any other writer I know, including her beloved
[T.H.] White, Macdonald is able to summon the mental world of a
bird of prey . . . she extends the boundaries of nature writing. As
a naturalist she has somehow acquired her bird's laser-like visual
acuity. As a writer she combines a lexicographer's pleasure in
words as carefully curated objects with an inventive passion for
new words or for ways of releasing fresh effects from the old
stock. . . . Macdonald looks set to revive the genre." --Mark
Cocker, Guardian "A talon-sharp memoir that will thrill and chill
you to the bone . . . Macdonald has just the right blend of the
scientist and the poet, of observing on the one hand and feeling on
the other." --Craig Brown, Daily Mail "What [Macdonald] has
achieved is a very rare thing in literature--a completely realistic
account of a human relationship with animal consciousness. . . .
Her training of Mabel has the suspense and tension of the here and
now. You are gripped by the slightest movement, by the turn of
every feather. It is a soaring performance and Mabel is the star."
--John Carey, Sunday Times "A well-wrought book, one part memoir,
one part gorgeous evocation of the natural world and one part
literary meditation . . . lit with flashes of grace, a grace that
sweeps down to the reader to hold her wrist tight with beautiful,
terrible claws. The discovery of the season." --Erica Wagner,
Economist "The magnificent H is for Hawk [has] grabbed me by its
talons . . . [it's] nature writing, but not as you know it.
Astounding." --Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller
"Macdonald is a virtuoso writer, and her beautiful, troubling,
deeply honest memoir incisively captures our fractured relationship
with the natural world." -- The Week
"It sings. I couldn't stop reading." --Mark Haddon, author of The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother
"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, author of In the Blood "A deep, dark work of
terrible beauty that will open fissures in the stoniest heart. . .
. Macdonald is a survivor . . . she has produced one of the most
eloquent accounts of bereavement you could hope to read . . . A
grief memoir with wings." --The Bookseller "A book made from the
heart that goes to the heart . . . It combines old and new nature
and human nature with great originality. No one who has looked up
to see a bird of prey cross the sky could read it and not have
their life shifted." --Tim Dee, author of The Running Sky "The most
magical book I have ever read." --Olivia Laing, author of The Trip
to Echo Springs
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