Daily Books - H Is for Hawk: A Novel by Helen Macdonald / Conversation Starters

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Helen Macdonalds

H Is for Hawk

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Copyright 2015 by dailyBooks. All Rights Reserved.

First Published in the United States of America 2015

We hope you enjoy this complementary guide from dailyBooks . We aim to provide quality, thought provoking material to assist in your discovery and discussions on some of todays favorite books.

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Tips for Using dailyBooks Conversation Starters:

EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER THAN the surface of its pages. The characters and their world come alive through the words on the pages, yet the characters and its world still live on. Questions herein are designed to bring us beneath the surface of the page and invite us into the world that lives on. These questions can be used to:

• Foster a deeper understanding of the book
• Promote an atmosphere of discussion for groups
• Assist in the study of the book, either individually or corporately
• Explore unseen realms of the book as never seen before

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THROUGH YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AND FIELD EXPERTISE, from newspaper featured book clubs to local library chapters, dailyBooks can bring your book discussion to life. Host your book party as we discuss some of todays most widely read books.

I N H IS FOR HAWK , THE MAIN CHARACTER IS HELEN, THE author of the book. She opens her book by talking about how great her love is for birds. She has worked as a falconer for many years, and recently, she took a particular interest in the goshawk. Goshawks are a bird of prey, and they are considered to be one of the most savage birds.

One evening, after observing goshawks, Helen receives news that her father has died. Helen always looked up to her father, so the news of his death is deeply upsetting for her. To deal with her grief, Helen adopts a goshawk that she names Mabel. Most of her time is spent training Mabel. Eventually, Mabel and Helen develop a bond with each other and grow to be comfortable with one another. Helen enlists the help of her friends, Christina and Stuart, to train Mabel so she can fly freely without flying away.

Even though Helen is making great progress with Mabel, she is still upset about her fathers death, which is affecting her life by inhibiting her from socializing and causing nightmares when she sleeps. She folds into herself and lives a life of solitude. Eventually, she loses her job because of this and is at risk of losing her home.

Helen reads the work of the author T.H. White, who tried to train a goshawk, but failed and lost his goshawk. Even though White did not take care of his goshawk, Helen is able to learn a lot from his work. She finds that she and White share the need to get away from society by putting their time into their birds.

Helen examines her fears while she hunts with Mabel. She is able to work through many of them, and she is finally able to write her father's memorial. Just when things are turning around for Helen, she nearly loses Mabel during a hunt. This event makes her realize she hasn't been taking care of Mabel as best as she could. She has been projecting her own emotions onto Mabel. This gives Helen the push she needs to enter therapy, and she learns she can be okay and have fun without Mabel by her side.

H ELEN MACDONALD GREW UP IN ENGLAND. SHE STUDIED at Cambridge University, and from 2004 to 2007, she was a Research Fellow at Cambridge's Jesus College. Macdonald was also a Research Scholar at Cambridge's Department of History and Philosophy of Science. She has been a writer for radio programs and was included in Birds Britannia a documentary series produced by BBC Four in 2010. In 2001, she published her first book, Shaler's Fish . Her second book, Falcon , was released in 2006. Her most recent book publication was H is for Hawk , which was published in 2014 and became a bestseller.

Helen Macdonald was close with her father. She considered him to be a good friend and her partner in crime. The two of them spent much of their time together with their respective outdoor hobbiesshe was interested in birds, and he was interested in airplanes. Macdonald's father died suddenly from a massive heart attack, which devastated her. After he had died, Macdonald says she began to dream about goshawks. Though she had been interested in hawks all of her life, she never wanted to train a goshawk because of how murderous they are. She decided to go ahead and try to train one, however, as a way to deal with her grief. Afterward, she cut off the human world nearly completely because she was so overcome with grief. Mabel, the goshawk, was the excuse she often used to stay away from them.

Eventually, after training Mabel for so long, Helen felt as though she was becoming more like a hawk than a human. She felt as though she was perceiving the outside world in the way a hawk would. Eventually, she became like a wild creature who was covered in blood, mud, and thorns, and she no longer washed her hair. Through this, she was able to forget about how sad she was. Unfortunately, Mabel caught an illness that could not be treated and died.

H is for Hawk discusses Helen and the relationship she has with her goshawk, Mabel. In what ways was this story unique compared to other stories you have read?