Helen Macdonald wins 2014 Costa book award for ‘haunting’ H is for Hawk

‘Scalpel-like prose’ of book exploring grief, love and nature hailed by Costa book award panel members in £30,000 win 

H is for Hawk tells of how Macdonald was so overcome by grief following the death of her father, that she decided to train the most untrainable of raptors, the goshawk. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Mark Brown, arts correspondent

Tuesday 27 January 2015 The Guardian

A book which explores grief, love and nature – as well as just how you train a goshawk you’ve bought for £800 – won its author Helen Macdonald a second leading literary prize.
H is for Hawk was named the £30,000 winner of the 2014 Costa book prize, adding to the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction that it won in November.
The writer Robert Harris, who chaired this year’s judges, said it was a book that haunted several members of the panel and was one they would never forget.
“Everybody agreed it was wonderful, muscular, precise, scalpel-like prose. It was a very clever and accomplished piece of writing that wove everything together.
“There are some books that win prizes because they demand it and then the public don’t quite get it. This is a book I think which everyone will like.”
Macdonald’s book has been hailed a triumph by almost every critic who has written about it.

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Helen Macdonald (left) poses with other Costa book award nominees, Ali Smith, Emma Healey, Jonathan Edwards and Kate Saunders. Photograph: Anthony Harvey/Getty Images

It tells of how the Cambridge historian, illustrator and naturalist was so overcome by grief after the death of her father that she went almost mad and decided to train the most untameable of raptors, the goshawk.
Weaved into the book is a biography of TH White, who also tried to train a goshawk more than 60 years before her.
Harris said it was at the back of judges’ minds that it had already won a big literary prize but “it’s very hard to say: ‘OK, this has had its place in the sun’”.
The Costa is different to other prizes in that it pits individual category winners against each other. So the best novel goes up against the best biography, best poetry, best debut and best children’s book.
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