An audio book.
Her twin died soon after birth. She was obsessed as a child with hawks, even sleeping with her arms behind her back like wings. She used to go bird-watching with her father. The first death she saw was a goshawk killing a bird. When her father (a press photographer) died (she was about 30, a Fellow at Cambridge for 3 years) she buys a goshawk and makes the leather accessories for it. She thinks that when a father dies, one doesn't only look for a substitute father, one seeks a new self that can love.
She tells us a lot about T.H. White (he wrote "Goshawk", wrote about King Arthur, and used extensive strategies to mask his homosexuality). She psycho-analyses White’s novels. She suggests that writing about nature is a popular outlet for gays - an acceptable form of love and avoidance of society.
She recounts her relationship with Mabel, comparing her progress with White's. In parallel we learn about how she coped immediately after her father's death (in ch 23 or 31 she attends her father's big memorial service).
We learn the language and history of falconry. When goshawks mate the female can kill the male. Goering had a trained Goshawk. Hawks in mythology are messengers between this world and the next.
She tries to make herself invisible so that the hawk (which she calls Mabel) will eat from her hand. She's used to being an invisible watcher. She and the hawk learn each other’s body language. She empathises so much she thinks it’s like demons in “His Dark Materials”. She walks with her hawk through the town. Then she thinks it's time for the hawk to fly. She’s trained hawks before. None have flown away. Now she becomes a novice again. She weeps each time she thinks Mabel is leaving - "I feel the distance between us like a wound". It wears a radio transmitter rather than traditional bells. She becomes jobless, forgets to pay bills, does some house-sitting.
She'd first read White's "Goshawk" when she was little and realises why she didn't understand White's actions then - she had little understanding of love or loss. White needed "to excel in order to love", but when he thought he might have trained ("manned" in falconry jargon) his bird, he self-sabotages because he realises that being an expert means he has no excuse. He loses his bird.
A Duxford WW2 bomber's appearance makes her think about aerial danger, her father's wartime experiences, his plane-spotting. She realises that "I'd fled to become a hawk but had made a hawk the mirror of myself". She goes on holiday with her mother to the States. Their attitude to hunting is different there. She's beginning to feel better.
A few longeurs (at the end for example) but most of the time it was absorbing.
The phrase "he had ... a look of amusement on his face" seems awkward to me. Where else than his face would he have a look? And "he looked amused" is a natural alternative. Then later there's “A baleful stare on her face”. Maybe other people are being objectified?
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