Like most stories of obsession, the book is a record of desire-in this case Baker’s quest to observe, follow, and ultimately become one with a falcon. The story is simple, set in the flat fields and marshes of Essex and the Blackwater estuary, near Chelmsford, where he lived all his life. But no events or news bulletins impinge on Baker’s narrative. In fits and starts, it becomes clear to the reader that it is also a kind of autobiography. It is structured as a diary, covering the months between October of 1962 and April of 1963, years that were as tumultuous as any others, here and abroad. First published in London, in 1967, by HarperCollins, and reissued by New York Review Classics, in 2004, the book is a story of obsession. One evening after a visit, I found a book that I did not recognize on a side table with a note inside, written in my friend’s tiny ant-track handwriting: “I think you may hate this but on the other hand you might not.” In the middle of October, a friend gave me a book, or I should say that he appeared to. A friend I loved had died at the end of the summer, and I had quarrelled with and parted from another. I found myself unable to unhitch from the four or five or six news feeds that I was checking daily, then hourly, and I was travelling a lot. Last fall, like many people, I felt overwhelmed.
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