ie They are NOT coming from overseas !!
H
IS FOR HAWK.
- By Helen Macdonald -
ISBN: 9780099575450
Publisher: Vintage Books, London, UK
Published: 2014
Binding: SOFTcover 300 pages
Condition: UNread & displayed condition! HERE in MELBOURNE! A retired display
copy as illustrated!
Edition: FIRST EDITION: Early printing 2014
TIGHT, SCARCE SOFTCOVER ~ IN MELBOURNE ...
WHY do ebayers buy from US?
Because you KNOW what you're getting. My close up photos are of the actual item!!
Remains UNread - it was the display copy instore . It is Tight - neat, no inscriptions or marks within. Appears as in my photos - this is the exact copy!! A nicely preserved copy - superb!
No discernible shelf wear, the interior is tight and spotlessly clean with 300 pages. THIS copy is the FIRST EDITION: Early printing from 2014 - the UK publishing by Vintage Books, London.
SCARCE title - this is an UNread copy!!
In original illustrated card SOFTcover binding, in publisher's bright illustrated covers which are in excellent condition.
(Stored with 2021!)
Measures approx. 7¾ x 5 inches or 20 x 13cms
SYNOPSIS ....
H is for Hawk is a 2014 memoir by British author Helen Macdonald. It won the Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book of the Year award, among other honours.
Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator.
When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer—Helen had been captivated by hawks since childhood—she'd 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.
Discover the number one bestselling phenomenon that is a powerful and profound mediation on grief expressed through the trials of training a goshawk.
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 £800 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.
**WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR**
**WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION**
**WINNER OF THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER**
About the Author
Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, historian, illustrator and naturalist. She's worked as a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, as a professional falconer, and in raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She is an affiliate of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She lives in Suffolk, UK.
Very Interesting read!
Reviews
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of nature's most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel's temperament mirrors Helen's own state of grief after her father's death, and together raptor and human "discover the pain and beauty of being alive" (People). H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying debut from one of our most unique and transcendent voices.
'Dazzling. Deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love and intelligence' - Financial Times
"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
'This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration' - Andrew Motion
'It just sings. I couldn't stop reading' Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
'Dazzling. Deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love and intelligence' - Financial Times
Brilliant writing ... Thought I'd reviewed this but apparently not. I found it utterly compelling. I usually read a book over a period of several weeks, but started this on a Friday evening and finished it on the Sunday morning. After waiting 3 days, thought I'd remind myself how it engages you from the word go, and "just read chapter 1 again". That was it, couldn't stop and before I knew it, I was two-thirds of the way through it again. I developed eye soreness and then pain: my GP was worried about a detached retina (didn't have that luckily). I'm awaiting new glasses before going back to it.
I'm a bird watcher but that's not necessary to appreciate this book. It is supremely well written, lyrical, poetic, tough, everything. Helen took on the work of training a (captive hatched) Goshawk. She'd trained other raptors such as Kestrels, but it turns out that Goshawks are the most difficult. Someone said a Golden Eagle is a doddle compared with a Goshawk. It needs total commitment and access to the advice of an experienced mentor, which she had when she needed it most. To Helen (coping with her father's death in whatever way was going to work) nothing else mattered. At one stage she had no job and had to leave her University lodgings, but such concerns took second place to the bird. Then there's the whole TH White business, which she felt she needed to deal with too. These things are interwoven throughout the book. There are unannounced changes of time and context which mean you have to concentrate. That's not a criticism.
A complex and - sorry, this will sound pompous - I think truly important and serious book, which deserves all the awards and accolades it's received. Just glad I didn't miss out on hearing about this book and quickly deciding it was a must-read.
Marvellous Reading!
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