H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

This review can also be seen in the Canon City Daily Record. 


I am not a bird person. Never have been, and the day a parrot bit me, I knew I never would be. I avoid aviaries and I ignore chickadees and robins at bird-feeders. Yet, we have chickens. I am able to enjoy them - somewhat - if at a respectable distance.

One evening, I looked into my backyard and saw our new, young rooster moving oddly at the door to the chicken house. He was out in the yard, back into the coop, and then back out the door again. What was he doing?! And then my eyes fell on a hawk, sitting on a fence post at the edge of our property - utterly still. The rooster finally stopped moving in and out, deeming the yard safe. When the hawk suddenly changed his position, the chicken ran back into the hen house. After a few moments of complete stillness from the bird of prey, the domestic bird felt safe to try his luck outside. And once again, the hawk changed his position, just slightly, like a game of Red Light, Green Light... taunting the poor rooster!

Amused, I saw the hawk had a sense of humor, a sense of fun about his business. So I was only mildly shocked at myself when I picked up "H Is for Hawk" by Helen Macdonald. One of the Ten Best Books from the 2015 New York Times Book Review, I had heard delighted praise for this work - part grief memoir, part literary exploration, part natural poetry. Surprised, but pleased, I was hooked from the first page, and I found myself enjoying yet another bird. This one was named Mabel.

With beautiful sentences, and delicious phrases Macdonald introduces us to her love for goshawks, a raptor related to eagles and buzzards. She observes, "Looking for goshawks is like looking for grace: it comes, but not often and you don't get to say when or how." Amidst the tale of her purchase, training, and flying of the hawk, we are invited to travel through the bereavement that grips her upon the untimely death of her father. And woven with these tender intimacies, Macdonald shares with us the private despairs of fellow falconer, T.S. White, author of "The Once and Future King." She divulges how the stories he composed of King Arthur, Merlin, and Camelot mirrored his own griefs, and how he found a dichotomy of struggle and relief in goshawking, just as she does.

This textured narrative insists that while the heart breaks and seeks flight, healing is only found in the human world. And I found, here, another bird to admire.

Photo credit: 

After Dad - Ralph Cohen

There's something that happens when you pick up a book published through a major publishing house - the reader trusts and has faith the book will meet certain expectations.  The book will be of a particular caliber, and all kinks will have been ironed out.  Slipping into the storied world will be seamless and easy for the reader.  One doesn't always find that in self-published works.  Yet, with After Dad, Ralph Cohen has created a novel that has come closer to a tightly-packaged big company produced piece than most other self-published books I have read.

Cohen exhibits an astute talent for the craft of writing.  After Dad is a heartfelt novel about an American family in the '60s following the sudden death of their husband and father.  Without dipping a single toe into a riptide of sentimentality, this story is observant, emotional, and character-driven.  The influence and  presence of Frank Kovacek posthumously in the lives of his grieving family is portrayed with creativity and patience.  

Each chapter focuses on one family member at a time - sometimes in a third person narration, first person at other times.  Some of my favorite chapters concerned Toby, the son so young when he looses his father.  Tall tales - cowboys and ball players - are woven with great skill into the perceptions of a lost and lonely young man.

When I talk about this book, I tell people it should be in the hands of an editor at a big city publishing house.  I also tell them that if I were the editor of said publishing house, with this book in my hands, I would praise Cohen... and tell him to give me something else.  Or at the very least change a few things in After Dad.  One being the numerous scenes of sexuality - some are intimate, some of them are graphic and distressing.  The affect of the story is lost in the effect of such scenes.  Such events can, and do, occur, but it was too much.  I also found the addition of Edgar/Eddie (assistant director of a funeral home) as an important character merely an attempt to flesh out the story.  I can see why Cohen put him there, but I do not feel he needs to be.  He disrupts the flow.  

And the last thing that stuck out to me is the "why".  Why do we care so much about this family?  Why should we spend 300+ pages learning about them?  Why are the Kovaceks a novel unto themselves?  The inherent purpose of this book is not obvious.  But I must admit, the quality of writing is so fantastic, there were times I did not care to answer that question.

All that aside, Ralph Cohen is a novelist to be discovered and given the opportunity to stretch and find what he can add to our literary world.  He is already so much further than many other new authors.

This book was kindly provided by the author for review.

Photo credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/417buPTtD0L._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg