Howard Norman
As with many of us, the life of acclaimed novelist Howard Norman has had its share of incidents of â€œarresting strangeness.â€ Yet few of us connect these moments, as Norman has done in this spellbinding memoir, to show how life tangles with the psyche to become art. Normanâ€™s story begins with a portrait, both harrowing and hilarious, of a Midwest boyhood summer working in a bookmobile, in the shadow of a grifter father and under the erotic tutelage of his brotherâ€™s girlfriend. His life story continues in places as far-flung as the Arctic, where he spends part of a decade as a translator of Inuit talesâ€”including the story of a soapstone carver turned into a goose whose migration-time lament is â€œI hate to leave this beautiful placeâ€â€”and in his beloved Point Reyes, California, as a student of birds. In the Arctic, he receives news over the radio that â€œJohn Lennon was murdered tonight in the city of New York in the USA.â€ And years later, in Washington, D.C., another act of deeply felt violence occurs in the form of a murder-suicide when Norman and his wife loan their home to a poet and her young son. Normanâ€™s story is also stitched together with moments of uncanny solace. Of life in his Vermont farmhouse Norman writes, â€œEverything I love most happens most every day.â€, In the hands of Howard Norman, author of ,The Bird Artist, and ,What Is Left the Daughter,, lifeâ€™s arresting strangeness is made into a profound, creative, and redemptive memoir.
Autobiography,Memoir,Nonfiction,Writing,Essays,Biography,Biography Memoir,Travel,Environment,Nature,Literature,American,Contemporary,Bird Watching
I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place