Second paragraph of third chapter:

We walked in dark winter light over fields furred with new wheat. Vast flocks of fieldfares netted the sky, turning it to something strangely like a sixteenth-century sleeve sewn with pearls. It was cold. My feet grew heavy with clay. And twenty minutes after we’d set out, it happened – the thing I expected, but for which I was entirely unprepared. A goshawk killed a pheasant. It was a short, brutal dive from an oak into a mess of wet hedge; a brief, muffled crash, sticks breaking, wings flapping, men running, and a dead bird placed reverently in a hawking bag. I stood some way off. Bit my lip. Felt emotions I hadn’t names for. For a while I didn’t want to look at the men and their hawks any more and my eyes slipped to the white panels of cut light in the branches behind them. Then I walked to the hedge where the hawk had made her kill. Peered inside. Deep in the muddled darkness six copper pheasant feathers glowed in a cradle of blackthorn. Reaching through the thorns I picked them free, one by one, tucked the hand that held them into my pocket, and cupped the feathers in my closed fist as if I were holding a moment tight inside itself. It was death I had seen. I wasn’t sure what it had made me feel.

I am not sure how or why I got hold of this book, earlier this year, but it is a beautiful read. There are three strands to it: first, Helen Macdonald’s acquisition of Mabel the goshawk, and the building of their relationship; second, the reflection of this story in T.H. White’s 1951 account of training a goshawk (and largely getting it wrong); and third, the death of Macdonald’s father at the start of the book, and the subsequent process of grieving and healing.

The setting is mostly around Cambridge, both the city which I know well and the rural surroundings which I know less well. The descriptions of both the physical and emotional environment of Macdonald’s engagement with the hawk are lyrical and moving. The bond with a bird can never be the same as the bond with one’s lost father; but you can build and grieve at the same time, and Macdonald brings us into that world of emotional clarity and confusion.

There is still a question in my mind about whether falconry is cruel to the birds. These are not superintelligent creatures, and the training is pretty much carrot and stick. I don’t think I would like to do it myself. At an embassy reception last December, I had the opportunity to pose with a peregrine falcon on my fist. The poor creature must have been very nonplussed by the noisy environment and being passed from hand to hand. Myself I was impressed by the sense of raw brooding power that I got from what is actually not such a very large animal. They automatically command respect, and Macdonald reflects that in every page of the book.

You can get H is for Hawk here.

This was my top unread book by a woman, and my top unread non-fiction book. Next on those piles are Autumn by Ali Smith, and The Compleat Angler, by Isaak Walton.