Logo
Prev
search
Print
addthis
Rotate
Help
Next
Contents
All Pages
Browse Issues
Home
'
Good Reading : July 2015
Contents
GOODREADINGMAGAZINE.COM.AU GOOD READING JULY 2015 64 H is for Hawk Helen Macdonald This is the stunning memoir of a woman crushed by grief. But Helen Macdonald doesn’t aim to drag you down into a depressing slog of a read; she’s far too busy tending to the bloodthirsty bird of prey that’s clamping onto her forearm. When Helen’s father, a distinguished photojournalist, died in 2007, the surge of sadness rendered her immobile. Jobless, lonely and hopeless, she found a way out of her void of depression through the spontaneous internet purchase of a goshawk – a huge, lethal, dragon-like raptor. She named the bird Mabel. Helen had been obsessed with falconry since she was eight and started training birds of her own when she was 13. But never had she dared to take on the mighty goshawk. They’re notoriously cantankerous and nearly impossible to tame. H is for Hawk takes us through the intensive six weeks it takes to gain a goshawk’s trust, leading up to the nauseating moment when the bird is let free for the first time, and all you can do is pray that this avian hunter will decide to return. Woven in to this gripping story is the biography of T H White, author of The Sword in the Stone and a fellow goshawk trainer. His story is sad too, but also endlessly fascinating. Helen’s descriptions of hunting with Mabel throughout the English countryside are a masterclass in prose and a fierce triumph of nature writing. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the Costa Book of the Year, this is undoubtedly the best memoir of 2014. I cannot recommend it enough. ★★★★★ Vintage $22.99 Reviewed by Angus Dalton Reasons to Stay Alive Matt Haig English novelist Matt Haig doesn’t seem like the kind of person to have much to be depressed about. He’s a successful author of nine books and one of them, The Radleys, i s about to be adapted into a movie. But back in 1999, when he was 24 and living on the Spanish party island of Ibiza, he fell into a deeply depressive state. Within a fortnight he was due to return to London, after six years of student life and summer jobs. The prospect of having to lead a responsible, adult life hit him in the face like a brick. This book is Matt’s account of how he slid into depression and what he did to pull himself out of the quagmire of the disease. He notes that suicide, which is one of the consequences of depression for many of its sufferers, is the leading cause of death in the UK, killing more people than stomach cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, breast cancer and Alzheimer’s. Matt was on the verge of suicide but fortunately he failed to follow through. I had always assumed that depressives who are on the brink of taking their own lives would hanker after death. But Matt points out that the fear of death persists just as intensely in depressive people as it does for the non-depressed. The attraction of death lies only in the cessation of mental anguish. He healed himself largely without medication (it only made him feel worse) and he examines a growing body of evidence that controverts the thesis that depression is caused by a serotonin deficit in the brain. A practical and personal guide for anyone wanting to know more about this condition. ★★★ Canongate $$24.99 Reviewed by Tim Graham bloodthirsty bird of prey that’s clamping onto GENERAL NON-FICTION WOM word of mouth RATINGS ★ ★ ★★ ★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★★ ★★★★ ★★★★★ RG
Links
Archive
June 2015
August 2015
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page
