Helen Macdonald

"H IS FOR HELEN" (16832066972).jpg
Autor/Urheber: summonedbyfells, Lizenz: CC BY 2.0

I was delighted to learn recently that Helen Macdonald's wonderful memoir has scooped the Samuel Johnson prize. There was a buzz about this book almost as soon as it was published, chuffed that I bought it early and I found it a stunningly honest, painful account of grief assuaged though a telling direct relation with nature and for me its simply the best birdy book I have read. In my appreciation stakes it stands beside: The Peregrine by J.A.Baker; a minor ornithologist who's off-kilter psychology has parallels with Helen Macdonald's biographical and secondary subject T.H.White, a strange and troubled schoolmaster. But most of all I love her nature writing, its sharp and emotional complex. Her accurate staccato-like brevity sweeps across the page like an enfilade nailing every target to the ground, It reminds me of the mountain writing of Nan Shepherd and the thoroughly modern Robert MacFarlane and for anyone's money you can't really do better than that. I heard her being interviewed on the radio recently where she described her book as "A love story to nature". It is, and Helen Macdonald is a gem of a writer.. Here she is describing her first meeting with her Goshawk, temporarily housed in a cardboard box, a quayside purchase somewhere (quite legal) in Scotland: -

"Another hinge untied. Concentration. Infinite caution. Daylight irrigating the box. Scratching talons, another thump. And another. Thump. The air turned syrupy, slow flecked with dust. The last few seconds before a battle. And with the last bow pulled free, he reached inside, and amidst a whirring, chaotic clatter of wings and feet and talons and a high-pitched twittering and its all happening at once, the man pulls an enormous, enormous hawk out of the box and in a strange coincidence of world and deed a great flood of sunlight drenches us and everything is brilliance and fury. The hawk's wings barred and beating, the sharp fingers of her dark-tipped primaries cutting the air, her feathers raised like the scattered quills of a fretful porpentine. Two enormous eyes. My heart jumps sideways. She is a conjuring trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. A griffin from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant like gold falling through water. A broken marionette of wings legs and light-splashed feathers. She is wearing jesses, and the man holds them. For one awful long moment she is hanging head-downward, wings open, like a turkey in a butcher's shop, only her head is turned right-way-up and she is seeing more than she has ever seen before in her whole short life"

Photograph taken at The Words By The Water book festival in Keswick. What a joy to hear and briefly meet this wonderfully engaging author, got my copy of her book signed too, and get this... her generous dedication reads "F is for Freddie". I think I am in love!

This really is a great read - and not just for birders..