If you think Helen McDonald and thought she hated the book you saw only the barest surface of what she was trying to say. T.H. White lives in McDonald’s head. The Goshawk was if not the first book she read with any level of criticism and complexity. I can see why you’d put it down, it’s neither swift nor light reading, but the entire point of writing a memoir of grief combined with the taking of a goshawk, all overlaid and intertwined with the story of T.H. White’s life is to bring us a little closer to seeing the broken and bleeding human beings everywhere around us.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.