Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This promised to be my kind of book; grief and healing through immersion in the natural world, specifically through training a goshawk. Add to these ingredients a parallel rediscovery of T.H.White's own book on training a bird of prey, 'the Goshawk' (which I haven't read but as 'The Once and Future King was my favourite book throughout adolescence, I knew a little about the writer). I wasn't disappointed. Beautifully written, this is a book to savour, to read and re-read, slowly. I lived through every moment of frustration and breakthrough in training Mabel. I loved the wealth of falconry detail and appreciated Helen Macdonald's sharp analysis of 'the baggage' in all the advice. Sexism, philosophy, animal rights and - above all - death: this passionate adventure in the company of a wild creature raises some big questions and offers only the experience itself in response. I am still thinking about the book; about the egotism of extreme grief, about the way we bring our own beliefs and emotions to our relationships with 'animals', and about the falconry training methods themselves. As I say, this is my kind of book; one of the best I've read this year, perhaps one of the best ever.