Book - 19, H is for Hawk

H is for Hawk (2014)

by

Helen Macdonald

Book Read: 3-13 July 2015

Note Written: 24 July 2015

'H is for Hawk' is a memoir by Helen Macdonald of her training a Goshawk, while dealing with the grief of the death of her father. I started reading it thinking of it as a novel and later found out that it was non-fiction. I struggled with the book a lot in the initial days. I have a basic disagreement with the author in keeping a hawk as a pet. In fact, I am not fond of keeping anything as pet at all. I know there are many things involved and reasons for keeping some animal or bird as a pet but taming something, conditioning some living beings' mind to our beck and call, suiting our needs mostly, while saying 'before it was wild, now tamed and trained' is not my cup of tea. 'Trained', a term, in this case, making something what it is not. Human beings are intellectually superior and have societal behaviour patterns but why should our ways of living be forced upon other creatures? I'll leave it there. This is a matter of many contentions and I don't wish to create an argument which would lead nowhere. You live in peace, I live in peace. Let me talk about the book. 

H is for Hawk also goes through, from time to time, the experience of author TH White in training a hawk, with much struggle and later failing to tame it. The hawk preferred freedom and never came back to him. Training and taming the hawk was a challenge for Helen too, but she was successful. The memoir was my hawk for a short while, I had my many disagreements, I struggled a lot. Later I decided to let it be and set the book free from my contentions and struggles, probably like TH White. The book was hard to get into, bit once I found the pulse of it, it became an excellent read- even though my own opinions came forth and challenged many things at times. I still maintain that an animal, bird, or any other being, conditioned to be a pet, is never, never, 'free'.