THE GOSHAWK

British narrator Simon Vance is the perfect voice for this very British book, an early work by White about his disastrous attempt to train a goshawk. Fans of White's classic ONCE AND FUTURE KING will recognize how much of this goshawk, and what White learned from falconry, wound up in the magical training of Wart, the future King Arthur, by the wizard Merlin (merlin being a hawk). Readers of Helen Macdonald's recent, and wonderful, H IS FOR HAWK will already know much about this book and be fascinated by what it was like for White to try to teach himself falconry from medieval sources. Vance's performance is appropriately donnish, literate, and articulate. He conveys his appreciation for White's marvelous language with perfect pacing and unflagging attention. B.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2015]