Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
That's interesting sun surfer. I didn't get that feeling, though clearly she has written the book quite some time after the events it covers. However, I think while some events such as difficulties she has when she takes Mabel out and the bird decides to fly further than she should, are probably an amalgam of different similar events, others would be very clear memories...
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One was early training when Mabel became obstinate for a while after doing so well. Helen more or less wrote that within hours she was freaking about doing a crap job and thinking it would never work out. Considering how clear she was beforehand with knowing exactly how difficult it could be to train a goshawk, and knowing already that hers was doing better than the norm, this level of dramatic hand-wringing over a minor setback was conspicuous to me. Then the coup de grace came - when her friends stopped by that day during the crisis she writes that they’d never know since she told them how well the training’s going.
An earlier one was the beginning when she started driving “without a clue” as to where was off to until she was halfway there. Little innocuous things like these lead me to think she may have a touch of a melodramatic or exaggerative inclination that slips out at times. There was even a point where she consciously reeled herself back in, writing something about no one in the park noticing her and the hawk and then writing that well of course people noticed.