H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer, Helen had never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk, but in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity and changed her life.
Heart-wrenching and humorous, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement and a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, with a parallel examination of a legendary writer's eccentric falconry. Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator. From Goodreads.

I don't usually read non-fiction but I needed it for a challenge. The topic was interesting as I visited Cheshire Falconry a few years ago. It was a very different book to what I expected. Yes. it is about Helen Macdonald training a goshawk but it turned out also to be about her depression after her father's death and a biography of T.H. White. I found a lot of the stuff about T.H. White a bit irrelevant but I can see that it fit her mental state at the time. I liked Mabel, the goshawk, a magnificent predator.

This book qualifies for:
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