H is for Hawk (Hardback)

"It just sings. I couldn't stop reading." -- Mark Haddon
"This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration: elegy for a father lost, celebration of a hawk found - and in the finding also a celebration of countryside, forbears of one kind and another, life-in-death. At a time of very distinguished writing about the relationship between human kind and the environment, it is immediately pre-eminent." -- Andrew Motion
"H is for Hawk is a dazzling piece of work: deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love and intelligence... The result is a deeply human work shot through...with intelligence and compassion... I will be surprised if a better book than H is for Hawk is published this year." -- Melissa Harrison * Financial Times *
"I'm convinced it's going to be an absolute classic of nature writing." -- Nick Barley * Guardian *
"I can't remember the last time a book made me feel so many different things in such quick succession." -- Rachel Cooke * Guardian *
"[Macdonald's] descriptive writing, startlingly and devilishly precise...is only the half of it. She has written her taming of Mabel like a thriller, slowly and carefully cranking the tension is that your stomach and heart leap queasily towards each other... Captivates." -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *
"Captivating... There is a highly polished brilliance to her writing. The English-speaking world has an old passion for books about creatures and captivating companions ... Helen Macdonald looks set to revive the genre." -- Guardian * Mark Cocker *
"Nature-writing, but not as you know it. Astounding." * Bookseller *
"It is a mark of Macdonald's achievement that so exultant a book can resolve itself in a sense of failure, yet leave the reader as uplifted as a raptor riding on a thermal." -- Philip Hoare * New Statesman *
"MacDonald's prose is poetic, forensic, yet often capable of quickening the pulse. Her lexicon...is vivid and joyous, soaring as freely as birds do." -- Benjamin Myers * New Scientist *
"One of the most eloquent accounts of bereavement you could hope to read... A grief memoir with wings." -- Caroline Sanderson * Bookseller *
"What she has achieved is a very rare thing in literature - a completely realistic account of a human relationship with animal consciousness... It is a soaring performance and Mabel is the star." -- John Carey * Sunday Times *
"Cunningly plaited and - almost - devastating... It deserves to sell shedloads and win prizes, it is naturalist writing of that spectacular quality that is literature too." -- Angus Clarke * The Times *
"A wondrous book of loss and recovery... When [Macdonald] matches her factual know-how...with her poet's eye, it is excellent... An exceptional book of twisted growth." -- Tim Dee * National *
"Absorbing... This memoir is lit with flashes of that grace, a grace that sweeps down to the reader to hold her wrist tight with beautiful, terrible class. The discovery of the season." -- Erica Wagner * The Economist *
"Astounding." * Bookseller *
"People talk about books that change your life. I loved the fact that this book does something much more valuable. It doesn't change anything. It leaves everything just where it was, only more so; more distinct, more itself. It opens your eyes. And it deepens what we have always known; that we live side by side with each other, as we do with the creatures around us." -- Laura Beatty * Caught by the River *
"A talon-sharp memoir that will thrill and chill you to the bone... Fascinating." -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *
"Mesmerising, decisive and devastating... Her description of Mabel in flight should be etched into every birdwatcher's field guide... Macdonald is a nature writer supreme, arguably the best practitioner of this art form writing today." -- Stuart Winter * Sunday Express *
"A soaring triumph." -- Christian House * Daily Telegraph *
"Beautiful." * Sport *
"Strange yet compelling... Macdonald's poetic prose soars... An uplifting message that...sends the heart soaring." -- Gerard Henderson * Daily Express *
"Vivid and fascinating." -- James Attlee * Independent *
"Soars beyond genres, and burns with emotional and intellectual intensity." * Nature *
"We can't recommend this strange, clever, beautiful book highly enough." -- Jarrold's Bookshop * Eastern Daily Press *
"A soliloquy that sings from the pages. Truly beautiful." -- Rufus the Hawk * Twitter *
"Heartbreaking." * Grazia *
"In fifty years time - a hundred - H is for Hawk will still defy easy definition. Readers will see wildness a little differently and they will still finish with a silent cheer for a fellow human starting to re-engage with the world. File under classic." -- Nigel Roby * We Love This Book *
"Poetic, imaginative and richly persuasive prose. Macdonald's sensitivity to English weather, landscape and natural habitat is extraordinary; she is a word-painter of the subtlest palette and an audio recorder of peerless quality." * Book Oxygen *
"Macdonald makes nature writing new." * For Books Sake *