When prizewinning writer Helen was a child, her parents thought her obsession with hawks may go the way of dinosaurs and ponies. Yet at six, she was sleeping with her arms folded behind her back, and singing ‘Dear Horus’ (an Egyptian falcon-headed god) in place of ‘Our Father’ at school assembly. After the death of her father and constant companion, Helen struggles to “make a new and inhabitable” world.
Already well-versed in falconry, she buys a Goshawk, and with an envelope of cash in her back pocket, feels like she is “doing a drug deal” when she goes to collect the 10-week-old ‘gossie’ from a breeder. Taking hooded Mabel back to the bow perch at her terrace, the patience required to train a raptor is fascinating. Helen describes finding her addiction out on a hawk hunt one day: “It was as ruinous as if I’d shot myself with heroin,” she says, as she breaks the neck of the rabbit Mabel holds in her talons. “I’d turned myself into a hawk.”
Unflinchingly raw.
