H is for Hawk

Written by Helen Macdonald, this is an odd conglomerate of memoir, literary exposition, and field guide. Macdonald writes of her father's death and her own crushing grief. An experienced falconer, she obtains a goshawk, which she names Mabel, to train as an attempt to tame the fierce wildness she senses inside herself. She also becomes reacquainted with T.H. White's The Goshawk, his own chronicle of training a falcon, in which as a novice he does everything wrong. Macdonald becomes obsessed with White and his life and his work. It's all a bit much. I didn't dislike the book, but I didn't feel it lived up to its hype.