I completely agree with Againstthetide and Elizabeth - the writing is exquisite. I found myself re-reading sentences and paragraphs just for the lyrical beauty of them. I also agree that it is not exactly a memoir in the strictest sense of the word; Helen writes about a very specific time in her life, a very specific trauma, the sudden death of her father, and her intense reaction. I must admit, and I don't mean to sound callow here, but her grief at the death of her father initially seemed to me to be overwrought. Of course the death of a parent is sad, and, depending on the relationship of the bereaved with the parent, can be very upending. But I just couldn't understand, or empathize with her seemingly complete breakdown. But as I continued to read, I think I got it. There's a passage when, as she prepares to fly the hawk free, she says it is a testing of the lines between us, of habit, hunger, partnership and familiarity, or, Love. And then she says "it's not a thing that's easy to do when you've lost trust in the world and your heart is turned to dust." I began to realize that she is not so much mourning her father, but the loss of her past, her security, her "center." Later on, in the same chapter she says that she needed Mabel because she was "secure in her place in the world" and there was no "regret or mourning in her. No past or future. She lived in the present only and that was my refuge. My flight from death was on her barred and beating wings." A few chapters later she talks about her desire to possess the hawk's eye, looking down on the world, invulnerable, detached and complete. yet she, Helen, realizes she does not feel safe. I think she does not feel safe from death, mortality. And that is what this memoir is about. By the end, she has begun to reconcile herself to her own human-ness, with all it's attendant uncertainties and griefs, and also it's happiness and delights.