One of our readers at this month’s Bookclub recording with Helen Macdonald, who was talking about H is for Hawk, told a story that brought to life one of the themes of the book. She revealed that she worked with prisoners, and described a programme in which they learn to train hawks. The result? The absorption in the birds, and the discipline of the training, mean that they begin to behave as if they’re no longer in prison: in a strange way, the birds of prey offer them the prospect of release.
Helen asked her if some of the prisoners had read the book. You won’t be surprised to learn that it had been passed round among them.
The story catches the power of this remarkable book, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, and which has become one of the more unusual successes of recent years. The set-up is simple; what follows is extraordinary. Helen lost her father (who was a well-known Fleet Street photographer) and succumbed to terrible grief. As one way of trying to recover herself she obtained a goshawk (Mabel) and went through the very demanding but rewarding process of training her, something that seemed at first impossibly daunting. As she put it to us, she found that there was safety in becoming part of the bird’s existence. In the wildness of Mabel’s nature, she found peace.
Threaded through the story of her time with Mabel (who’s now dead) is the experience of the writer T.H.White (The Once and Future King) who found a similar relationship with a goshawk. In his case, as she told our readers, it was almost certainly a means of escape for sexual frustrations that, because of the conventions of his time, he couldn’t acknowledge (he was probably gay). In his case, there was a pitched battle between man and bird; in Helen’s a picture of growing friendship. For both of them, she said, the goshawk acted as a kind of mirror of their own needs.
That observation catches the essence of the book. Its humanity. Her description of grief at the loss of a loved one is vivid and touching, and the whole narrative gleams with honesty. Everyone goes through such experiences, because they are part of who we are, but her account of her inner feelings is a notably touching one. Our readers, to a man and woman, described how it rang true for them. And the gradual bonding with the killer Mabel, from the moment they meet on a Scottish quayside (Helen choosing the good-natured Mabel instead of the other bird which she was expecting to take) is also the story of her reconciliation with the world. In their differences, they found a place where they were together.
Of course, the sheer excitement of falconry is one of the book’s thrills. Hawks are so different. They can see colours that we can’t, and watch the beat of a bee’s wings. Helen describes that distance between them as a mystery that’s profoundly humbling.
It’s as though the effort to reach across the natural divide, knowing that perfect understanding between them is impossible, makes all our other human efforts – like dealing with grief – seem easier, and comprehensible. Mabel took Helen out of herself, and when that happened she knew herself better. ‘I’m a cheerful person now,’ she told us. ‘In the book, I wasn’t.’
Describing the days when she started to train Mabel and tiptoe into her world, she told us about having to kill off rabbits or pheasants that Mabel had almost killed, but not quite. ‘The darkness of that moment drew me to the light.’
All that is left of Mable is a vase of moulted feathers, but anyone reading this book – or hearing Helen on this programme – will remember her. I hope you enjoy the programme.
Next month’s book is quite different, a nineteenth century classic. As part of the BBC’s #LovetoRead project I was asked to choose a book that inspired me as a young reader. It wasn’t difficult. I can remember my youthful encounters with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped with real excitement, as if it all happened yesterday, and it’s going to be fun to talk about it – with the novelist Louise Welsh – and, moreover, in an old inn that plays an important part in the story. Stevenson is said to have begun writing in a room in the Hawes Inn at South Queensferry on the Firth of Forth, from where that young David Balfour is kidnapped, and where his perilous adventure begins. We’ll be there to record the programme next week, and you can hear it on Sunday, November 6th.
Happy reading,
Jim.