The brilliance of this memoir is that not only does it recount a period of grief in the author's life, but it couches that personal story in the history, culture, literature, and landscape of England, especially as it relates to the life and work of author T.H. White. I especially enjoyed the connection Macdonald makes between the opinions and descriptions of both hawks and women throughout British history. This was but one way in which Macdonald blurs the lines between the wild and the domestic/human. Or I suppose she just points out that those lines are always blurred even though we might try to tell ourselves otherwise. 
 There's also this idea she touches on that as we live our lives, we carry with us all of the other possible lives we might have lived. I think I'm paraphrasing that badly, but that's how I remember it, and I feel it acutely as my fortieth birthday rapidly approaches. 
 Listening to this book, I was struck again by the difference in heft of the history that the British carry with them compared with those in the United States (at least those in the United States who are not native to North America). I look forward to exploring more what this difference means and how it affects the ways in which each culture acts and reacts in the present. In addition, I always enjoy hearing people with British accents imitating an American accent, and listening to this audiobook provided me several opportunities for this. 
 This memoir is a rich story of grief and falconry and human psychology, and I enjoyed the audiobook so much that I bought the book-book so I can spend more time with my favorite passages (and share it with my animal-loving daughter). Hopefully if I spend lots of time reading this book, I will be better able to combat my current urge to take up falconry. My cat hopes so, too.