H is for Hawk

Helen Macdonald

ISBN 10: 0224097008 / ISBN 13: 9780224097000

Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 2014

About this Item

Unread, uncorrected proof copy of this magnificent and very successful book. Signed by the author, name only, on the title page in bold black pen. The pages are still tight like new and the covers are bright, albeit a little curled at the corner tips and there's a small scraped area right at the top edge of the front cover before the words "uncorrected Jonathan Cape proof" Furthermore, the front free end paper (also called the fly leaf) appears to have been torn out as evidenced by the stub of the missing page. It's easy to miss that it has been torn out, but only fair to mention it in this description. In all this is a very presentable copy of this scarce signed proof copy. NB. we also have in stock an almost mint condition copy of the hardback first impression of this title which would compliment this copy very well. Seller Inventory # 010146

Bibliographic Details

Title: H is for Hawk

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, London

Publication Date: 2014

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket as Published

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: Uncorrected Proof Copy

About this title

Synopsis:

Winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize Winner of the 2014 Costa Book of the Year Award Shortlisted for the 2014 Duff Cooper Prize Shortlisted for the 2014 Thwaites Wainwright Prize `In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. Bigger, yes. But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see. Birds of deep woodland, not gardens, they’re the birdwatchers’ dark grail.’ As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H. White’s tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White’s struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals. `To train a hawk you must watch it like a hawk, and so gain the ability to predict what it will do next. Eventually you don’t see the hawk’s body language at all. You seem to feel what it feels. The hawk’s apprehension becomes your own. As the days passed and I put myself in the hawk’s wild mind to tame her, my humanity was burning away.’ Destined to be a classic of nature writing, H is for Hawk is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it's a kaleidoscopic biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T. H. White, best known for The Once and Future King. It's a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love.

About the Author:

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist and historian of science. Her book H is for Hawk won many prizes, including the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Costa Book of the Year, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France, and in the US was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, and lives in Suffolk.