2. 职称英语
  3. Describing the first time she laid eyes on Mabel, the hawk that would form t

Describing the first time she laid eyes on Mabel, the hawk that would form t

游客2024-09-19  7
问题     Describing the first time she laid eyes on Mabel, the hawk that would form the center of her life for over five years, Helen Macdonald’s book recalls her as "a conjuring(魔术)trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water."It is this unique, beautiful description of the relationship between human and wild falcon(猎鹰)that led the judges of this year’s Samuel Johnson prize to name Macdonald’s book, H is for Hawk, the winner of the most prestigious award in nonfiction. Part misery memoir, part naturalist diary, the book, documenting Macdonald’s attempts to win the trust of her goshawk(苍鹰)Mabel as she struggled to deal with the death of her father, was described by the chair of the judging panel, Claire Tomalin, as "an extraordinary book that displayed an originality and a poetic power. None of us on the panel were either naturalists or wildlife enthusiasts but this book just took hold of us." The book is the first memoir to win the Samuel Johnson prize, which comes with a ￡20,000 cheque for the winner, in its 16-year history.
    A poet, historian, naturalist, illustrator and Cambridge academic, Macdonald has had a love of birds since she was a child and after university went to breed falcons for an organisation that supplied sheikhs(酋长)in Gulf states with birds. She has written one other book, an academic history of falconry, but the story told in H is for Hawk is one that was deeply personal to Macdonald, and it took her almost seven years to put it on to paper. It opens with the sudden death of her father, Alisdair, a Fleet Street photojournalism from a heart attack. In the wake of his death, Macdonald buys a goshawk for ￡ 800 and begins the slow and often painful journey of its training at her home in Cambridge while dealing with her own depression.
    Tomalin said that while the shortlist had been very strong this year, Macdonald’s book had proved a universal favourite with the panel. "It is certainly a very unusual book," she said. "As part of the judging process we each made a note for our top books, and it was very quickly apparent that Helen’s book was coming out above all the others. It just fitted every criteria we were looking for—everything from originality and beauty of writing and even considerations such as, ’if you had one book to give a friend which would it be?’, and ’which book do you think will still be read in 20 years’ time?’"
    As well as exploring Macdonald’s own often compelling relationship with her hawk, the book is an academic exploration of the author T. H. White, known for The Once and Future King, his sequence of four books based on Arthurian legend. White wrote a book, The Goshawk, about his own ill-fated attempts to train such a bird. McDonald’s depth of research into White also attracted praise from the Samuel Johnson panel. [br] It can be learned that the death of Macdonald’s father______.
选项 A、drew her attention to birds
B、began her relationship with a goshawk
C、triggered her desire for writing books
D、stopped her interest in breeding falcons
答案 B
解析 细节题。由题干中的the death of Macdonald’s father定位至第二段第三、四句。由这两句可知，麦克唐纳的父亲死后，她花800英镑买了一只猎鹰，开始了对这只鹰的训练，也就是说，是父亲的死开始了她与这只鹰的奇妙关系，故[B]为答案。
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