H is for Hawk : The Sunday Times bestseller and Costa and Samuel Johnson Prize Winner

Author: Macdonald, Helen

Memoirs

Published on 26 February 2015 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage) in the United Kingdom.

Discover the number one bestselling phenomenon that is a powerful and profound mediation on grief expressed through the trials of training a goshawk.

**WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR**** WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION**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.

**SELECTED BY CARIAD LLOYD ON BBC TWO'S BETWEEN THE COVERS**'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