I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place (Paperback)

"The events of a single episode of Howard Norman's superb memoir are both on the edge of chaos and gathered superbly into coherent meaning . . . A wise, riskily written, beautiful book." -- Michael Ondaatje
Howard Norman's spellbinding memoir 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 brother'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 tales--including the story of a soapstone carver turned into a goose whose migration-time lament is "I hate to leave this beautiful place"--and in his beloved Point Reyes, California, as a student of birds. Years later, in Washington, D.C., an 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. In Norman's hands, life's arresting strangeness is made into a profound, creative, and redemptive story.
"Uses the tight focus of geography to describe five unsettling periods of his life, each separated by time and subtle shifts in his narrative voice . . . The originality of his telling here is as surprising as ever." -- "Washington Post"
"These stories almost seem like tall tales themselves, but Norman renders them with a journalistic attention to detail. Amidst these bizarre experiences, he finds solace through the places he's lived and their quirky inhabitants, human and avian." -- "The New Yorker"

General

Imprint:	Mariner Books
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	May 2014
First published:	May 2014
Authors:	Howard Norman
Dimensions:	201 x 136 x 14mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	208
ISBN-13:	978-0-544-31716-1
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Collections & anthologies of various literary forms Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Literary Books > Biography > Literary Promotions
LSN:	0-544-31716-5
Barcode:	9780544317161

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