I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place

A memoir of the haunting and redemptive events of the acclaimed writers lifethe betrayal of a con-man father; a murder-suicide in his familys house; the presence of an oystercatchereach one, as the saying goes, stranger than fiction As with many of us, the life of novelist Howard Norman has had its share of incidents of arresting strangeness. 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. Normans 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 brothers 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 talesincluding the story of a soapstone carver turned into a goose whose migration-time lament is, I hate to leave this beautiful placeand in his beloved Point Reyes, California, as a student of birds. In the Arctic, he receives news over the radio that John Lennon was murdered tonight in the city of New York in the USA. And years later, in Washington, DC, 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. Normans story is also stitched together with moments of uncanny solace. Of life in his Vermont farmhouse Norman writes, Everything I love most happens most every day. In the hands of Howard Norman, author ofThe Bird ArtistandWhat Is Left the Daughter, lifes arresting strangeness is made into a profound, creative, and redemptive memoir.