Book Club: June 3, 2024, 2-4pm, – Fellows and External Fellows

June 3, 2024, 2-4pm, – Fellows and External Fellows

Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk (2014)

Discussion leader: Peter Alberti

Are you ready for a strange but compelling read? Already a classic of nature writing, this award-winning work is also the unflinchingly honest memoir of a young British poet and historian who retreats from the world in her grief at her father’s sudden death. Since it was he who taught her all about falconry when she was a child, she becomes obsessed with the idea of raising and training a fierce young goshawk. Thus begins the deeply engaging record of her struggle as much with grief as with the hawk’s difficult taming. It’s a book about reconciling life with death, humans with nature, deep memories of the past with visceral experiences in the present. And, as one reviewer remarked on her engaging writing, she “renders an indelible impression of a raptor’s fierce essence — and her own — with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don’t notice their astonishing engineering.” (Available in all formats; 320 pages)

The link to register is https://forms.office.com/r/0dm2zKD7Tw

The deadline to register is the Monday morning the day of the event at 8 am. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.

If you have any questions, please contact the organizer – Linda Hutcheon at l.hutcheon@utoronto.ca.