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Craving more animal mystery braided with unsentimental grief after H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald? The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson awaits.

Curated by NextBookAfter Editors. This read-alike match weighs tone, themes, pacing, character dynamics, and emotional payoff rather than genre alone. See how recommendations are chosen.

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Why It's Your Next Read

  • The source's animal obsession, rendered stranger and slipperier
  • Father-loss refracted through another unknowable creature
  • The source's braided inquiry, recast through eel science
  • Quiet, unsentimental grief in the same meditative register
  • Less physical danger, more centuries of scientific obsession
The Book of Eels Cover
★★★★☆ 3.91 • Goodreads

Genre

Subgenres

Tags

  • Animal Obsession
  • Grief and Loss
  • Natural History
  • Scientific Mystery
  • Father-Son Relationship
  • Lyrical Nonfiction
  • Environmental Loss
  • Human-Animal Connection

A son follows the mystery of the eels he once caught with his father, moving between natural history and memories of their quiet nights together. The animal's unknowable life becomes a way to approach inheritance, mortality, and a loss that facts cannot solve.

If H Is for Hawk held you through the way Helen Macdonald makes fierce attention to Mabel speak the language of bereavement, The Book of Eels follows an equally elusive animal into a quieter father-son history. Patrik Svensson alternates memories of fishing beside his taciturn father with the centuries-old scientific pursuit of the eel's origins and transformations. Each discovery opens another uncertainty, so natural history never becomes mere explanation: the animal's hidden life keeps pressing against what a son can know about inheritance, mortality, and the person beside him in the dark.

Here, grief moves through black water, inherited ritual, and a mystery science still cannot close.

The match is structural as much as thematic—memoir, science, literature, and obsession continually change the meaning of one another. Svensson's register is restrained, melancholy, and alive to wonder without turning the creature into easy consolation. Expect less bodily danger than Macdonald's goshawk training and more patient intellectual pursuit, but the same refusal to make wildness surrender all its secrets.

The eel remains unknowable, and that is precisely how the father stays close.

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What Readers Are Saying

"Both the author and I have been preoccupied with understanding and recollecting a father/son relationship..." — Marcus, Goodreads

What Readers Are Saying

"This book manages to be a combination of wonderful nature writing, a scientific history, a memoir about a father and son..." — Brandon Forsyth, Goodreads

What Readers Are Saying

"The structure helped accentuate what I found to be the book's biggest takeaway - the quest for the eel is, ultimately, a quest for ourselves." — Jennifer, Goodreads

Awards & Recognition

Two more ways to follow the feeling

Go Deeper—or Sideways

Cover of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings by Helen Jukes

Under the Radar

A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

by Helen Jukes

Wild Attention Inside the Hive

Unsettled in a new home, a novice beekeeper accepts a colony and spends a year learning the intimate, perilous work of keeping creatures that never quite become tame. Her close attention to the hive opens into questions of solitude, care, friendship, and how to live with uncertainty.

  • The source's close observation, transformed into collective wildness
  • The source's practical care, dispersed across a hive
  • Macdonald's fierce restlessness softened into patient hope
  • Less ferocity, more intimacy with an alien society
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Cover of The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Wildcard Pick

The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

Grief Beside an Unreadable Dog

After her closest friend dies, a writer inherits his enormous, grieving Great Dane and risks her apartment rather than give him up. Their uneasy life together becomes a searching, darkly funny meditation on loss, memory, art, and the limits of knowing another creature.

A city dog replaces a wild hawk, yet grief, obsession, and another unreadable animal create the same emotional pressure.

  • Animal companionship carrying the same burden of grief
  • Mabel's unreadable mind recast through canine companionship
  • The source's essayistic grief moved into urban fiction
  • Urban domestic stakes replacing rural wildness
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What to read after H is for Hawk

Readers searching for adult books like or similar to H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald usually value this source appeal: Macdonald's intensely observant first-person voice.

If your search is specifically for books similar to H is for Hawk for adults, this match keeps the grown-up stakes, voice, and reader payoff central rather than drifting into younger or purely genre-adjacent suggestions.

If you like H is for Hawk and want to know what to read next, start with The Book of Eels. It is the closest NextBookAfter match for readers who want a book like H is for Hawk with the same core appeal.

The Book of Eels is a similar next read for fans of H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald because it echoes this source appeal: Macdonald's intensely observant first-person voice. It moves through nature writing and scientific memoir.

Books like or similar to H is for Hawk: quick answers

What should I read after H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald?
For readers seeking books like H Is for Hawk, The Book of Eels pairs animal mystery with father-loss, A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings makes wild attention gentler and collective, and The Friend moves the same grief and unreadable companionship into an urban novel.
If I like H is for Hawk, what should I read next?
Read The Book of Eels next for the source's animal obsession, rendered stranger and slipperier; the tradeoff is less physical danger, more centuries of scientific obsession.
What is a book like H is for Hawk for adults?
The Book of Eels is the closest adult readalike here for readers drawn to this source appeal: Macdonald's intensely observant first-person voice. Specifically, it offers the source's animal obsession, rendered stranger and slipperier; the tradeoff is less physical danger, more centuries of scientific obsession.
What are good books similar to H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald for adults?
The Book of Eels matches this source appeal: Macdonald's intensely observant first-person voice. It carries that connection through the source's animal obsession, rendered stranger and slipperier; the tradeoff is less physical danger, more centuries of scientific obsession.
Is The Book of Eels similar to H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald?
Yes. The specific match is the source's animal obsession, rendered stranger and slipperier; the tradeoff is less physical danger, more centuries of scientific obsession.
Why recommend The Book of Eels for fans of H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald?
Recommend The Book of Eels because it offers the source's animal obsession, rendered stranger and slipperier; the tradeoff is less physical danger, more centuries of scientific obsession.
How many books like H is for Hawk are on this page?
This page lists 3 curated recommendations for readers looking for what to read after H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald.

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