Welcome to Litsy!

I think of the complex histories that landscapes have, and how easy it is to put easier, safer histories in their place. The fields in Cambridge, farmed organically, are teeming with life. These are not. The big animals are here: the deer, the foxes, the rabbits; the fields look the same, and the trees, too, but this land is empty. There are few plants other than crops, and few bees, or butterflies, for the soil sprayed with chemicals that kill.

I am becoming fascinated by her quality of attention. I'm starting to believe in what Barry Lopez has called "the conversation of death”: something he saw in the exchange of glances between caribou and hunting wolves, a wordless negotiation that ends up with them working out whether they will become hunter and hunted, or passers-by.

On paper, this memoir full of nature writing should be a slam dunk for me…those are two of my favorite nonfiction genres. However, I didn‘t love the execution of Macdonald‘s journey through grief after the loss of her father. She trains Mabel, the hawk, musing on the impermanence of life and our fragile little selves. Animals handle life and death better than we human beings. I think my expectations were too high, based on awards this received.

I do love a how many have you read type list! Even if, as many have pointed out already, this one is very skewed. And of course heaven forbid we get genre cooties on our Serious Best Books list (except Jemisin cause she's exceptional but don't worry Cloud Atlas can't possibly be genre [except it totally is] cause David Mitchell is a Serious Literary Author don't you know - but definitely no romance or fantasy or YA or *gasp* all three!)

I liked the parts of this that were memoir of Helen‘s life, her childhood and love for her dad, her fascination with hawking from a young age, and her experience raising and working with goshawk Mable.

As other reviews have said, I could have done without most of the parts about TH White. I ended up skimming a lot of that, and don‘t think the book needed that much info about him.

I am interested in her other books.

Good morning from Sietje 🙂🐕

It's not the tagged book, but it's edited by the same author.

#aty24 #bookthatisntanovel

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#midwintersolace #naturalitsy I LOVED this book. I think it was the cover that grabbed me, then I realized HM wrote this about her grief journey when her father died suddenly. My father had died suddenly and I was ( with my sister) suddenly aware of how much work my father had been doing to support my mom and her declining health ( she eventually was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia). Absolutely no falconry aspirations but I got the grief

This was beautiful & sad, with an undercurrent of violence that comes with the territory of "taming" a wild animal. I found it moving in a lot of aspects, & appreciated the biographical aspects of White's life as integral to Macdonald's attempt to work things out within herself. The saddest thing was contemplating these hawks & falcons; do humans have to mess with nature in order to heal themselves? All throughout I just wanted Mabel to be free.

I thought of the tagged book so many times during our 2-hour falconry experience yesterday. This local place has special certifications that allow them to offer interactive presentations to the public in a safe and legal way. I still kind of want to get into falconry, which I imagine would be rewarding, humbling, and very messy, but maybe I can just get my next job with a falconer. (This is me with a Harris's hawk.)