APHASIA|Painful Remembering and Language in Helen McDonald’s H is for Hawk

Written on the sudden death of her beloved father, Helen McDonald’s H is for Hawk is a memoir — quite literally, a record of her memory of this profound grief and how she coped by moving to a house in the countryside and attempting to train a goshawk, Mabel.

Memory takes centre stage in this creative memoir, as McDonald finds refuge from her pain in the intricacies of the art of training goshawks, and navigates the complicated terrain of loss by experiencing and writing the language of falconry. The goshawk herself becomes a metaphor for her grief — intractable, frightening, uncomfortably heavy, but also capable of giving her a new perspective on existence, nature, and letting go.

As she learns to establish a better relationship with her goshawk, she comes to key insights about her relationship with memory, grief, and loss as well, realising that while nature isn’t always a comforting space, and goshawks are unpredictable and cruel, there’s also much to be learnt from the experience of letting go in the midst of nature instead of attempting to be in control of every single emotion and thought that one is feeling, especially when confronted with such a difficult situation as the death of a family member and the memories it inevitably forces one to live with. McDonald wants to be more like the goshawk, unencumbered, majestic, and far from human suffering. Through it all, McDonald blends the history of falconry with her personal history, and connects them to her identity as a contemporary falconer and now, solitary griever.