
H Is for Hawk
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Narrated by:
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Helen Macdonald
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By:
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Helen Macdonald
About this listen
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald’s story of adopting and raising one of nature’s most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide.
One of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year
One of Slate’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
When Helen Macdonald’s father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer captivated by hawks since childhood, she’d never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators: the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk’s fierce and feral anger mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T. H. White’s chronicle The Goshawk to begin her journey into Mabel’s world. Projecting herself “in the hawk’s wild mind to tame her” tested the limits of Macdonald’s humanity.
By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement, a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, and the story of an eccentric falconer and legendary writer. Weaving together obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history, H Is for Hawk is a distinctive, surprising blend of nature writing and memoir from a very gifted writer.
©2014 Helen Macdonald (P)2014 Isis Publishing, Ltd. UKListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking - about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens.
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Difficult and Better in Print
- By Nick O. on 07-18-23
By: Rachel Cusk
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I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You
- By: Miranda Hart
- Narrated by: Miranda Hart
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Hello to you, I am with news. I have a new book: I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You. I know – what an intriguing title! Basically, I have had an unexpectedly difficult decade – there have been surprising joys but also deep revelations and challenging lows. I shall be honest about those, because what I discovered in the difficult times were my, what I call, treasures.
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Well, thanks a lot, Miranda…
- By amiebojamie on 10-27-24
By: Miranda Hart
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Prophet
- By: Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché
- Narrated by: Jake Fairbrother, Ryan Forde Iosco, Charlotte Davey
- Length: 17 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been nemeses and reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-Mi6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things—about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK and is followed by a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate.
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Recording is terrible
- By Shaun on 10-02-23
By: Helen Macdonald, and others
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Fox & I
- An Uncommon Friendship
- By: Catherine Raven
- Narrated by: Stacey Glemboski
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. In the meantime, she taught remotely and led field classes in nearby Yellowstone National Park. Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m.
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Nature is cruel.
- By Jess on 12-03-21
By: Catherine Raven
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Second Life
- Having a Child in the Digital Age
- By: Amanda Hess
- Narrated by: Amanda Hess
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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As an internet culture critic for The New York Times, Amanda Hess had built a reputation among readers as a sharp observer of the seductions and manipulations of online life. But when Hess discovered she was pregnant with her first child, she found herself unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis of her own. In the summer of 2020, a routine ultrasound detected a mysterious abnormality in Hess’s baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers.
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Every mother should read this book
- By Mariya Mayer on 05-18-25
By: Amanda Hess
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A Mercy
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, "with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady." Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.
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Great book
- By Pablo Tebas on 01-18-09
By: Toni Morrison
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The Flamethrowers
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Reno, so-called because of the place of her birth, comes to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity—artists colonize a deserted and industrial SoHo, stage actions in the East Village, blur the line between life and art. Reno is submitted to a sentimental education of sorts—by dreamers, poseurs, and raconteurs in New York and by radicals in Italy, where she goes with her lover to meet his estranged and formidable family.
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Overrated
- By Amazon Customer on 09-30-24
By: Rachel Kushner
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The Line of Beauty
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby—whom Nick had idolized at Oxford—and Catherine, who is highly critical of her family's assumptions and ambitions. As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family.
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Perfect Prose
- By Andre on 03-13-25
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Handmade
- Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction
- By: Gary Rogowski
- Narrated by: BJ Harrison
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Handmade is a profound meditation on the eternal value of manual work, creativity, human fallibility, and the stubborn pursuit of quality work. Rogowski tells his life story of how he became a craftsman and how years of persistent work have taught him patience, resilience, tolerance for failure, and a love of pursuing beauty and mastery for its own sake.
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tedious and indulgent
- By Craig Newcomb on 03-13-19
By: Gary Rogowski
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A Manual for Cleaning Women
- Selected Stories
- By: Lucia Berlin
- Narrated by: Thom Rivera, Dawn Harvey, Carol Monda, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers, and bad Christians.
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Exquisite writing, lopsided performances
- By Sazafrass on 03-02-16
By: Lucia Berlin
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Pulphead
- Essays
- By: John Jeremiah Sullivan
- Narrated by: John Jeremiah Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us - with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that's all his own - how we really (no, really) live now.
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Interesting Perspectives
- By Nancy on 09-05-24
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Runaway
- Stories
- By: Alice Munro
- Narrated by: Kymberly Dakin
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Three stories concern the same woman - in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.
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Poor Audio Quality
- By David on 04-02-10
By: Alice Munro
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Beyond Suspicion
- By: ITN Productions
- Narrated by: Yinka Bokinni
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Original Recording
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In this chilling true crime series, we tell the stories of pillars of the community who betrayed the trust of those around them and challenged what we all think about the people we’ve come to rely on. Police officers, teachers, doctors and nurses, we believe these people are here to protect us from harm, not cause it. This series looks at some of the most heinous crimes perpetrated by people in positions of trust and examines the ripples their actions left on their community.
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Well done in all aspects
- By G. Wesley Aven on 05-22-25
By: ITN Productions
Macdonald’s book reviews the life of T. H. White. White is an English author admired by modern writers like J. K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman. White wrote “The Once and Future King” and “The Sword in the Stone”, two magical stories about the legends of King Arthur. Interesting thoughts about White’s life are weaved into Macdonald’s view of herself, the recent death of her father, and her experience as an austringer (one who keeps goshawks).
Like White, Macdonald feels she has to prove her human’ competence. In contrast to White’s goshawk’ experience, Macdonald is quite successful as a trainer and keeper. This is not a story that will resonate with all who listen to it. However, Macdonald is a very good writer. Among other categories, “H Is for Hawk” is an excellent manual on how to keep and train a goshawk. Any fault in the book is in its subject; not it’s writing.
CATEGORIES
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English Literature
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Excellent
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Beautiful reading and beautiful book
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If you could sum up H Is for Hawk in three words, what would they be?
I will be honest: I bought this because Audible was having a sale and it cost $5. I'd heard it was good, but a memoir about grief sounded awful. I assumed I'd give it 20 minutes and then give up. Boy was I wrong.The book grabbed me from the opening lines. MacDonald's incredible narration gives it a whole new dimension. And the way that she weaves together the different narrative strands,—about her experiences with falconry, White, and her father—are greater than the sum of their parts. It's truly an incredible literary skill, and the book is also immensely gripping (I would say entertaining but that seems wrong considering the content). For a book about grief, it is not maudlin or an excessive downer. Rather it is an incredibly moving meditation on our search for meaning in a totally not-sappy way. I can't recommend it highly enough.
One of my favorite books ever
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This book was so engrossing that I walked farther and farther every day just to hear more. I could see the English countryside, feel the rain, smell the mud, and touch the feathers of the goshawk through the words of the author.
I loved this book.
Superb narration!
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Stunning!
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Must read
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Beautiful and Interesting, but,
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Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Maybe someone who's interested in falconry.What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
Most interesting: Metaphor of hawking to (author's) life.Least Interesting: Details of hawking.Have you listened to any of Helen Macdonald’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I have not. I would listen to another performance. She has a beautiful, melifluous voice.Did H Is for Hawk inspire you to do anything?
No. Well, maybe look for more books narrated by Halen Macdonald.Any additional comments?
I found my mind wandering. I liked the book; loved the narrator, but the story itself, while interesting, wasn't interesting enough for me.Loved the Narrator's Voice!
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