Set after WWI, The Hawkman is probably best described as magical realism, telling the very real, very painful stories of Miss Williams and Mr. Sheehan. Miss Williams lives in Britain but grew up in the U.S. under difficult circumstances. Mr. Sheehan is a veteran of the Great War - Irish born and considered a turncoat in his homeland for fighting for Britain, where he was attending university when the war began.

Everyone needs a fairy tale to survive the hardships of reality. Miss Williams knows this better than anyone - she was fed stories as a child to explain her father's disappearance. She goes on to study fairy tales and write some of her own, bringing her to the town where a very strange man lives. When she sees the young veteran who is almost bird-like in appearance and who is dismissed by the locals as troublesome and unworthy of kindness, Miss Williams shows kindness and love. Mr. Sheehan - the Hawkman - finally finds a place of peace and acceptance while his mind continues to torture him with memories of the war.

The Hawkman isn't perfect but it's beautifully written and that carried me through the points of the book that seemed a little less directed. Inventive and yet very real, LaForge takes us through difficult realities with a touch of magic to make it all momentarily more beautiful.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks go to Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Amberjack, and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my unbiased review. The book starts with a death and a bridegroom, so one knows that's happening at some point. Then we are introduced to Miss Williams and a homeless, shell shocked soldier looking for his next meal and a roof over his head. Williams seems to be a bleeding heart. Well I think two and two can be put together. It's the fantasy portion of the story that has me still a bit thrown. I can't quite put my finger on why it happened. Like what's the meaning behind it? I think I missed something monumental? I know what I read, but it's just not clicking. Regardless the selflessness was beautiful. LaForge teases me enough with this book that I'm interested to see what she produces next.

This book is a unique fairytale set after the Great War. The story follows Mr. Sheehan, aka "The Hawkman" and Miss Williams, a college teacher. Mr. Sheehan has an appearance that suggests a bird like resemblance, hence the nickname. Miss Williams allows Mr. Sheehan to stay at her cottage because most people think he is strange and dangerous. The more Miss Williams opens her heart and life to Mr. Sheehan, she begins to get sick and eventually needs to get treatment from doctors. The doctors don't know why she is sick, and the only one who seems to help her is Mr. Sheehan. Over the course of the story, some people learn from the pair, and some remain prejudiced.
I thought this was a weird tale, and I found myself skimming through it because it was so strange, and some of the realistic war details were a little too much for me. I usually am able to finish a book and I haven't met many books I didn't like, but this one was just not my cup of tea. I'm sure some people will enjoy it, so give it a try if you think you might like it. I will say that I was sympathetic to the two main characters' plight and some parts of the book were well written, and the author seemed to do her research.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. A positive review was not required, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Drawn in by the cover, the intriguing description, and the promise of magical realism, I was, unfortunately, a bit disappointed by the story. Maybe my expectations were to high.

The story of two main characters takes place after World War I in England, it's a Grimm Fairy Tale retelling. This main plot is interspersed with fairy stories and flashbacks.

The writing is very good. I just had the feeling that this story wanted to be more than it actually was, it was trying a bit too hard.

Well that was.... interesting? I know this is meant as a sort of fairy tale and there are many fairy tales within it, but they all seem quite opaque. I think I would have preferred this as just a straight story, as both main characters have very interesting backgrounds. Having it pegged as a fairy tale made me expect more supernatural elements, when really, this was more about trauma and mental illness.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

I don’t usually read this genre, however I loved this beautidully written book amd will look out for similar themes in the future.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

I have picked this book from the Read Now section of NetGalley and this is my honest unbiased review. I chose this book because the gorgeous cover attracted me and the synopsis sounded very appealing. What I loved about this book mainly was the setting and the time period it took place. I have to note here that the story alternates between the past and the present for the two main characters of The Hawkman and Eva Williams. Both the time frames were interesting but I found myself more engaged with their present than their past backstories.

The story as the author mentioned in the acknowledgment is inspired by The Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale The Bearskin. The story focuses more on the characters of the protagonists and what made them be who they are today. This is more of a magic realist tale. It is well written but I felt the pace was a little slow for my taste. I preferred the backstory of Eva than of Sheehan. If you are a fan of magic realism give this a try you might like it.

I'm a bit iffy on what I would want to rate this book. The writing comes off as a bit stiff but the plot was interesting. It had a few things I liked but quite a few things I didn't care for. It's somewhere between 2.5 - 3 stars for me.

Well Ms La Forge, you have ripped my heart from my chest, stomped on it, squeezed it and released it into the air like a bird ... in the most delightful way.

The Hawkman begins with the untimely and unusual death of a woman on her wedding day in a small village in England, and from there her story unfolds.

Ms Williams is an American woman, a storyteller who has been employed by the local college, post World War I. She is somewhat of a misfit, due mostly to her flights of fancy and her 'American-ness'. English people don't really get her and her liberal views. In the same village there is a vagrant known as The Birdman, who is reviled and abused by the community. The locals don't know why he came to their village, he has no family ties. They want him gone but Miss Williams sees the humanity in him and. one day when she meets him in the forest she shows him extraordinary kindness without seeking any kind of explanation or reward.

The prose of this novel is lyrical and a bit dense at times, but when read aloud, is a real treat for the ears. The characters are so human and are beautifully drawn. Their stories are heart-breaking, uplifting, frightening and sublime. It is a fairytale about war, but it is also a story about the capacity for kindness and love in humanity, how we endure through adversity and, ultimately, what makes us want to keep living ... the wondrous people around us.

Love it! It's a page turner. I would definitely recommend this to my friends. This is a wonderfully sweet and story. The author perfectly captured the best of life that I will most remember.. So overall, I give this book 4 stars.

The Hawkman is a book that has tested me, thoroughly, on my ability to give any kind of coherent review. Set in the aftermath of the great war, the story of Michael and Eva twists and turns - sometimes a fairytale, sometimes evocative story of emotional connection and its power over our human lives, sometimes a heartbreaking tale of how easily we can "other" people and turn on ourselves.

The prose itself is absolutely gorgeous - "He was a man of discards sewn together, and Christopher wondered how it was that the village, his father, and even himself had managed to stretch such a small, improbable reliquary of self-doubt into a vast, frightening figure of half-man and half-monster." Undoubtedly, this will be a book that divides its readers - it's not an easy read, but instead demands your full attention and thought - but I suspect it will find itself only growing in recognition as the years go by.

Can you judge a book by it's cover? I chose this book because of the cover. Beautifully written story that takes place at the end of the Great War. Between fantasy and reality, it touches on many aspects of the traumas and cruelties of war and society. But, believe there is kindness and compassion despite the prejudices! Thank you Net Galley for the opportunity to review this work. 3.5 Stars

The Hawkman presents an adaptation of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale "The Bearskin" set in the aftermath of World War I in a quiet English village. The titular character is Michael Sheehan, an Irish pianist who was a German POW; having settled in England (unable to return to his native land), he spends his time lurking about the outskirts of the village, content to remain mute to the world. Eva Williams is an American schoolteacher who discovers his existence and his overall treatment from the villagers, and strives to help him regain his identity.

The story blends the eventual friendship that blossoms between these two misfits in this provincial town with exposition about their previous lives - Michael's experiences in the trenches and in the German POW camp, and Eva's childhood upbringing with the storytelling mother. The flashbacks for each are lengthy and poetic - rich in description but slow the momentum of the present-day story. There were times when the past and present blurred, bringing forth an almost surreal aspect in the narrative structure.

I enjoyed the story - the insight into a veteran's struggle to return to civilian life, and the misunderstanding / ignorance (denial?) of the effects of the First World War on those who survived.

I wasn't able to finish it. My only problem was with the writing that I found kind of "stiff", which made the pace slow. It’s not that I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t read more than five pages at a time. And now I feel bad, because it doesn’t deserve the 1 star rating that I usually give the books I don’t finish, because something tells me that this is a beautiful story and the two main characters were well written. Maybe the timing was not right… So I am giving it 2 stars and a ticket for re-evaluation in the future.

A magical and unusual love story set in England after the First World War. Sheehan is a lost soul, shell shocked after his experiences in the trenches. But after being rejected by society he is found by Miss Williams, a young ‘cordial but stiff’ American teacher, who is determined to save The Hawkman from himself and the neglect of the community.
Written rather in the style of a fairy tale, we learn more about the main characters through flashbacks, which often themselves contain fairytale like stories. Not being a great reader of such tales, I sometimes found the detailing too much and did skip over some lengthy passages. The flashbacks didn’t generally work that well for me and felt too heavy in comparison to the main thread.
But I really enjoyed and was fascinated by the love story set in the present and would have given that five stars. I found it quite lovely.
A nicely written story that will make me try more from this author.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Second time read. First time review.

I received this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The first time I rated this book, I gave it a 4. Second time around, I did find myself getting a little bit bored here and there but it still deserves a 4.

The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War was a pretty interesting book. The world and the characters were still intriguing that it kept my tapping my little page arrow on my kindle. Yet, again, I definitely did get a little bored. Now I'm not completely blaming the book or the characters, because my work days are filled with boredom but I will say that it was definitely better the first time I read it.

This book is a fairy tale about war. Well, it's more like it's about an Irish musician, Michael, and an American school teacher, Miss Williams. Out of the two, Michael was probably more of my favorite character. He lost a lot, mostly himself, after the war. He goes through want so many veterans, and mostly anyone that has been in a war, he is abandoned and left alone to rot. Well, until the day that Miss Williams finds him and takes him in. She showed so much compassion for someone she didn't know that it definitely gave me so much hope for humanity.

Yes, I know that this is a book and that these are characters - it will still give me hope that people will end up doing the same thing today. Back to Miss Williams, well she hasn't had a cheery or happy past either. Nope, she has been fighting depression since day one. Now I have no idea what depression feels like but I know that it's a very serious thing to struggle with on a daily basis. It made me feel so sad for this character because of how she acted and treated other people while dealing with her own demons.

Throughout the story you will feel that emotional tug at your heart strings. You might also fall in love with one or both characters and their amazing story. Michael and Eva had terrible childhood but they cared so much for each other that it made their lives that much better.

Overall, the ending of this book was even more amazing the second time around. I will definitely be diving into this book for the third time sometime soon (maybe next year??).

I am a sucker for a nice cover and this book really attracted me because of that. I initially struggled to get into this, but really enjoyed it once I did. I did find I needed to concentrate a fair bit

Oh, how I wanted to like this book. It had everything I wanted: fantasy, a modernist retelling of a Grimm’s fairy tale, cloaked in historical fiction. Two fascinating characters, and a very sweet love story in the middle of it that vibrates with wonder all the way through.

And Jane Rosenberg LaForge, for the most part, pulls it off. Underneath the gorgeous cover lies a multilayered story that packs past on top of present, mystery on top of prejudice and casts a sprinkling of magic over all of that. Set in rural England after the Great War, the story focusses on Miss Williams, an American schoolteacher, who takes in the town misfit, Mr Sheehan. He is the Hawkman: almost an animal, who has withdrawn into himself after the horrors of the trenches and time as a POW. They are both lost souls, who gradually try and build a life together.

However, this isn’t a simple saviour story. It’s all about transformation. Mr Sheehan transforms from the Hawkman- as in Grimm’s ‘Bearskin’, doomed to be trapped in near-animal form- into a man, while Miss Williams dooms herself by nursing him back to health. And as she retreats for comfort into the fairytales that she writes in her spare time, it’s clear that a transformation is happening to her too…

The Hawkman is a wonderfully delicate story. LaForge’s writing is intricate, exploratory and almost wistful, weaving together reality and magic with folklore to delve into the backstories of her two main characters and explore the horrors of war through Mr Sheehan’s eyes. Here, silence takes on a power of its own: as a method of protest, of communication and transformation, as a way of demonstrating the damage left behind by the war. And the ordinary is made wonderful by the beautiful descriptions, the delicately drawn-out metaphors that litter the writing like jewels, drawing together the past and the present.

It’s a stunningly complex novel, really: one that deserves an essay more than a book review! LaForge reframes the narrative of war by looking at it through the lens of the magical; recasts post-war England as land of folklore, and throws the faults and cruelties of humanity into terrible relief whilst doing so. She’s piecing together a story that tries to make sense of life after the Great War, and showing how telling stories can help us do that.

However, this book also has its drawbacks. It’s long. It’s complicated, and sometimes it gets so lost in the backstory of its characters that you lose your place and become disengaged. It makes you work for the meaning you get from it. And sometimes, that sort of opacity is not what you want from a book. Perhaps I was in the wrong mood for it, but at times I struggled to carry on reading it.

As allegory, as a folktale, The Hawkman is a beautiful story. The faint air of melancholy that permeates the whole book makes for a memorable, haunting tale that brings magic and history a little closer together. If only it were a little clearer!

Three word review: haunting. Mystical. Sad.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amberjack Publishing for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found myself struggling through the first quarter of the book but once I got past it, the rest was surprisingly an easy read.

Originally I was intrigued on the idea of taking a fairytale and blending it with historical facts of WWI but this expectation of mine based on the book blurb was not to be. Instead, the book came across as a well researched yet fictionalized version of the war veteran, Mr. Sheehan, coming to terms with the reality of living after the war with some elements of fantasy thrown in.

The overall flow of the book felt a bit disjointed as the flashbacks of Mr. Sheehan dominate more than half the book and doesn't allow for more backstory on Ms. Williams, the other half of this book to be well represented or fleshed out so that when she becomes more of a central character in the last 1/4, it's hard to connect with her, much less understand what her role is.

Beautifully written, sometimes heavy in prose and symbolism, and well researched, this reads better as a fictionalized account of a war veteran than a fantasy-themed novel.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for my honest review, all opinions are my own. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read modern literature! I would consider The Hawkman a modern classic because of the use of classic literary themes like forgiveness and redemption.

The Hawkman focuses on two characters, with only a few minor characters entering the scenes. Known as the Hawkman, the Irish musician suffering from the after-effects of the war, Mr. Michael Sheehan, and Miss Williams, the American teacher dominate the fairy tale.

Even though the novel introduces the Hawkman first, I'm going to focus on Miss Williams as my introduction. She is faced with prejudice against women, is seen as an old maid and yet, she continues to extend kindness. I felt like she had a backbone and would do the right thing under any circumstances. She seemed like a person to be admired, though she would never be famous or important by the standards frequently eschewed by the world. Even though her mother had warned her as a child to never touch a bird, she feels prompted to extend her kindness to the broken man on the street. After she chose to reach out to him, she realizes that she needs to continue because he is now dependent on her.

Through the trauma of WWI, and his reception back in polite society of Great Britain, Mr. Sheehan has been transformed from a man to a beast. His eyes are yellowed, his hands like claws and his steps mincing and uncertain like a bird. He is feared and hated by his fellow men. Once he is adopted by Miss Eva Williams, she becomes his entire world and he will do whatever he must to protect her.

I enjoyed reading The Hawkman with its beautiful prose and veiled hints. If I were to make an editorial change, it would be to break up some of the scenes where the reader learns the history of both Mr. Sheehan and Miss Williams. I was so intent on what was happening in their current situation, I desperately wanted to know more and receive the background a little more slowly. With that said, I can't remember more poignant and stunning descriptions of war. How can one write something so beautiful about something so awful? Both of their backstories are critical to understand the motivation behind each of the characters. Even minor characters, like Christopher Thorton being reticent, receive a quick fleshing out. Each person felt like they had a full life backing up their actions.

It was interesting to view this story as a fairy tale. The moment I finished the epilogue, I returned to the prologue to link the scenes together. It was within the last few chapters and the very beginning where I felt the connection to a fairy tale. It was surreal and sublime.

Here are a few quotes for your enjoyment:

"But she had not found the England she expected when she arrived. The place and its people were impenetrable in all aspects: the tart curve in their speech, the defeated fabric of their clothes, the sallow nature of their complexions." (Loc. 202)

"His fingers were like leaves, their reach toward the sun and meaning. She saw no harm in touching him, although she knew the danger of touching birds, particularly hatchlings." (Loc. 233)

"Their bodies could be next on that pile. He resolved, if not for himself, then for Altman, to never alter his appearance. If he lived to grow out his hair, a beard, his fingers and toes to claws, until he was ape, or bear, or anything more natural than he was." (Loc. 813)

"He could provide each note with the isolation it deserved, before it was grafted onto the next; he could make way for the slip of an instant, so the phrase could be savored, without his crushing it. This was a compromise, between music and vacuum, and he would jeopardize neither if he could keep what his hands and body had suffered away from the instrument." (Loc. 912)

"She was about to leap from underneath the blankets the nuns had piled atop her when she was suddenly in a larger room - the dormitory in the children's asylum. She had been stripped of her blankets, and given an anemic substitute that did nothing to keep out the consuming winter temperatures." (Loc. 1628)

"Sheehan jammed the letter his mother had written into his fist, and then he picked it apart, as if dressing a chicken." (Loc 2315)

I recommend The Hawkman, and look forward to more books by LaForge.