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I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place: A Memoir of Life's Arresting Strangeness and Arctic Solace
“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
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
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
66 people are currently reading
1610 people want to read
About the author
Howard Norman
59 books282 followersHoward A. Norman (born 1949), is an American award-winning writer and educator. Most of his short stories and novels are set in Canada's Maritime Provinces. He has written several translations of Algonquin, Cree, Eskimo, and Inuit folklore. His books have been translated into 12 languages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
June 10, 2018
I decided to read Norman’s memoir because 1) it has a great title, maybe especially for a memoir by an older man; 2) he spent some of his life in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I also grew up and 3) While I have read none of his novels, decades ago I had heard him read in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor (Karl Pohrt’s Shaman Drum Bookstore) from of his many folklore projects, translations of Cree, Inuit and other indigenous Canadian tales, and own several of them, including his very first ones that are not even listed on Goodreads, some of them chapbooks, such as The Wishing Bone Cycle: Narrative Poems From the Swampy Cree Indians, (1976); 4) I know he likes to play with narrative structure, and 5) I had some time to kill in a car trip.
All that said, I didn’t love it. The book is made up of five tales from his life, none of them obviously connected, and none of them all that memorable to me. There are themes lightly tracing their way through the tales that provide a kind of loose continuity about his life: he loves birds and poetry, he loves weird characters, but there doesn’t seem to be a deeply connecting link between any of them. Even the title is a little bit disappointing; based on a tale he recalls, it nevertheless seems to have little to do with the various situations he depicts, which are none of them wonderful, and which he always seems happy to leave! The first story is about working in a bookmobile in Grand Rapids, connecting to his brother’s girlfriend (Now, Norman would have worked on that bookmobile during a period in the sixties when I got books from it! That that is the most memorable thing to me about this vignette is not what a writer wants).
Grey Geese Descending, that mourns the loss of an early relationship, this was pretty good, but I don’t sense the deepness of that relationship. Other tales bring Norman to the Arctic; he gets a degree in folklore and becomes a translator, where he encounters the story of a soapstone carver turned into a goose whose migration-time lament is “I hate to leave this beautiful place”—and to Point Reyes, California, where he becomes a student of birds. In Canada he hears John Lennon is killed, a local band erupts in mournful versions of all his songs, and later, a poet house-sitting his Vermont house commits suicide. It all sounds interesting, and clearly has been for many people, just not me. He didn’t help me deeply connect to anything, either the madcap stories of lust and rock and roll or the stories of loss. None of it really grabbed me (except the story of a morning radio jock who made connections between acts of random crime [a teen shooting at his neighbor’s dog] and the bad weather; I liked that guy; for some reason THAT guy I will remember).
Yes, there are shorebirds in each of them, a kind of weaving, sure. I just wasn’t also woven into them as other seem to have been. But I might finally read Norman’s The Bird Artist!
All that said, I didn’t love it. The book is made up of five tales from his life, none of them obviously connected, and none of them all that memorable to me. There are themes lightly tracing their way through the tales that provide a kind of loose continuity about his life: he loves birds and poetry, he loves weird characters, but there doesn’t seem to be a deeply connecting link between any of them. Even the title is a little bit disappointing; based on a tale he recalls, it nevertheless seems to have little to do with the various situations he depicts, which are none of them wonderful, and which he always seems happy to leave! The first story is about working in a bookmobile in Grand Rapids, connecting to his brother’s girlfriend (Now, Norman would have worked on that bookmobile during a period in the sixties when I got books from it! That that is the most memorable thing to me about this vignette is not what a writer wants).
Grey Geese Descending, that mourns the loss of an early relationship, this was pretty good, but I don’t sense the deepness of that relationship. Other tales bring Norman to the Arctic; he gets a degree in folklore and becomes a translator, where he encounters the story of a soapstone carver turned into a goose whose migration-time lament is “I hate to leave this beautiful place”—and to Point Reyes, California, where he becomes a student of birds. In Canada he hears John Lennon is killed, a local band erupts in mournful versions of all his songs, and later, a poet house-sitting his Vermont house commits suicide. It all sounds interesting, and clearly has been for many people, just not me. He didn’t help me deeply connect to anything, either the madcap stories of lust and rock and roll or the stories of loss. None of it really grabbed me (except the story of a morning radio jock who made connections between acts of random crime [a teen shooting at his neighbor’s dog] and the bad weather; I liked that guy; for some reason THAT guy I will remember).
Yes, there are shorebirds in each of them, a kind of weaving, sure. I just wasn’t also woven into them as other seem to have been. But I might finally read Norman’s The Bird Artist!
June 22, 2020
I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place is a collection of essays. The author writes of events in his life related both to his family and home environments in Washington D.C., Vermont and California and to his travels and work as a translator of Inuit stories and observer of birds. He speaks of his youth working in a bookmobile. This was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He speaks of the suicide / murder that occurred in his own D.C. house in 2003. He had lent his house to an acquaintance he didn’t know that well--a mother and her young son. He explains his emotional involvement and how he sought closure after the event.
Norman writes in his usual style, with a mix of caustic humor and philosophizing. The writing is very good. That it is a collection of essays is what prevented me from liking it more.
Jim Meskimen narrates the audiobook very, very well. You feel as though the author is sitting across a table from you, talking to you. He catches the mood of the lines superbly.
Having read this, I am now tempted to read The Ghost Clause. A book concerning the supernatural is not something I usually go near, and yet a good author can pull off the unexpected. I am guessing that it will be built upon the murder /suicide in his home. I have a hunch that this author will create from his own experiences something good.
You must try this author if you haven’t before.
*********************
*The Bird Artist 4 stars
*The Museum Guard 3 stars
*What Is Left the Daughter 3 stars
*I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place 3 stars
*The Ghost Clause TBR
*In Fond Remembrance of Me: A Memoir of Myth and Uncommon Friendship in the Arctic TBR
Norman writes in his usual style, with a mix of caustic humor and philosophizing. The writing is very good. That it is a collection of essays is what prevented me from liking it more.
Jim Meskimen narrates the audiobook very, very well. You feel as though the author is sitting across a table from you, talking to you. He catches the mood of the lines superbly.
Having read this, I am now tempted to read The Ghost Clause. A book concerning the supernatural is not something I usually go near, and yet a good author can pull off the unexpected. I am guessing that it will be built upon the murder /suicide in his home. I have a hunch that this author will create from his own experiences something good.
You must try this author if you haven’t before.
*********************
*The Bird Artist 4 stars
*The Museum Guard 3 stars
*What Is Left the Daughter 3 stars
*I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place 3 stars
*The Ghost Clause TBR
*In Fond Remembrance of Me: A Memoir of Myth and Uncommon Friendship in the Arctic TBR
January 18, 2016
Norman has quickly become one of my favorite writers (see also Next Life Might Be Kinder). You wouldn’t think these disparate autobiographical essays would fit together as a whole, given that they range in subject from Inuit folktales and birdwatching to a murder–suicide committed in Norman’s Washington, D.C. home and a girlfriend’s death in a plane crash, but somehow they do; after all, “A whole world of impudent detours, unbridled perplexities, degrading sorrow, and exacting joys can befall a person in a single season, not to mention a lifetime.”
November 12, 2015
Reading this memoir felt like unraveling a skein of yarn. Stories wound around other stories, threads seemed to wander out in new directions, then with only the thinnest connection the original thread of an account would be picked up. Through the winding and wrapping, Norman wove an interesting pattern of barely hinted insights.
August 15, 2013
First-person. The essay. They suit Howard Norman, whose voice you will become comfortable with in this set of five essays spanning his life from age 15 to present day. Each piece is anchored in place. Each features Norman's associative mind, his attempts to make sense of life's symbiotic relationship with change. The results in some cases are stronger than others.
The opener, "Advice of a Fatherly Sort," is a coming-of-age piece set in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Young Howard is shown the ropes by this older brother's girlfriend, Paris Keller. He develops his lifelong interest in birds thanks to his job on the local bookmobile. He tangles verbally with his scofflaw Dad. Not much happens. That said, a lot of successful books offer little in the way of "happens." You have to find the narrator interesting, and Howard is a unique kid.
"Grey Geese Descending" and "I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place" are less compelling, though not without interest. In the first, we are introduced to his ill-fated girlfriend (he's in his 20s now) and his 80-something-year-old friend, Isador, a Holocaust survivor who cannot forgive himself for accepting a bit movie role as a Nazi guard decades ago. He did it for the money. The third piece takes us north into the wilds of Canada where Norman tangles with some some wild shaman-type eccentric. It's hard to develop appreciation for the beautiful surroundings with such an ugly medicine man mugging in front of the camera.
For the close, we go to now-married Norman's summer home in Vermont, where he frets over an ill kingfisher and shyster well diggers and his older brother, who wants help in escaping the law. Norman, meanwhile, is bedeviled by a fever that won't go away. Here "place" succeeds in ways it failed in the second and third essay. As for the finale, any tale of a house sitter who murders her 2-year-old son in your house, then offs herself, cannot help but draw you in. Full of philosophy and quiet despair, it's a lovely closing to the set. In particular, Norman seizes on the Frost quote, "The only way out is through" for succor.
If you believe essays should stay on topic and be focused like the college models we were taught, you'll find Norman's discursive, wandering style a distraction. At times, though, it's part of the fun. Overall, a pleasant kinship forms. As tour guide, Norman rates high marks. He may talk too much, but he's interesting in his way.
The opener, "Advice of a Fatherly Sort," is a coming-of-age piece set in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Young Howard is shown the ropes by this older brother's girlfriend, Paris Keller. He develops his lifelong interest in birds thanks to his job on the local bookmobile. He tangles verbally with his scofflaw Dad. Not much happens. That said, a lot of successful books offer little in the way of "happens." You have to find the narrator interesting, and Howard is a unique kid.
"Grey Geese Descending" and "I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place" are less compelling, though not without interest. In the first, we are introduced to his ill-fated girlfriend (he's in his 20s now) and his 80-something-year-old friend, Isador, a Holocaust survivor who cannot forgive himself for accepting a bit movie role as a Nazi guard decades ago. He did it for the money. The third piece takes us north into the wilds of Canada where Norman tangles with some some wild shaman-type eccentric. It's hard to develop appreciation for the beautiful surroundings with such an ugly medicine man mugging in front of the camera.
For the close, we go to now-married Norman's summer home in Vermont, where he frets over an ill kingfisher and shyster well diggers and his older brother, who wants help in escaping the law. Norman, meanwhile, is bedeviled by a fever that won't go away. Here "place" succeeds in ways it failed in the second and third essay. As for the finale, any tale of a house sitter who murders her 2-year-old son in your house, then offs herself, cannot help but draw you in. Full of philosophy and quiet despair, it's a lovely closing to the set. In particular, Norman seizes on the Frost quote, "The only way out is through" for succor.
If you believe essays should stay on topic and be focused like the college models we were taught, you'll find Norman's discursive, wandering style a distraction. At times, though, it's part of the fun. Overall, a pleasant kinship forms. As tour guide, Norman rates high marks. He may talk too much, but he's interesting in his way.
November 22, 2013
Brilliant memoir. Divided in 5 essays in which the writer ruminates on his past experiences. Each vignette reads like a segment of his coming-of-age and the vignettes are in chronological order. The writer is deft at handling issues of loss, death and coming to terms. I was especially intrigued by how birds played a role in the vignettes. My favorite story was Grey Geese Descending that mourns the loss of a relationship. Along the way, Norman drops quotes by other writers such as "the only way out is the way through" (Frost) and others. A quick read but one that has staying power.
August 13, 2016
I am in the minority by claiming this, and perhaps I was influenced by the stress and complications surrounding the couple of days over which I read this memoir, but I thought this an emotionally cold and distancing book. Norman's style put distance between himself and the reader, and distance between himself and his "material" - and neither thing I've noticed in his fiction (though it's been many years since I read his novels). A couple of examples I highlighted:
... our uninhibited lovemaking was new and surprising. (And that's all that's said about it! "new and surprising.")
... as she sat across the wooden table from me, her coat and scarf still on, I got lost in her physical self -- entranced might be the word -- as if I were memorizing her. This no doubt doesn't speak well for me: shouldn't one live fully in the moment. (Why should it speak badly of him? It's sort of difficult to live fully in the moment during an infatuation. Living in the moment is overrated anyway.)
I just sensed - perhaps incorrectly - that Norman wasn't comfortable writing these memoir-essays. He got the information down, diary-like, then left it. But I don't know.
This has nothing to do with literary quality, but have to mention that I found a copyeditor's note left in the text (Kindle version; print, too I wonder?): {{DEANNE: reader should know what he's wearing; I asked this earlier and got no response}}
That's an embarrassing gaffe for the publisher and the first I've come across except when I'm indexing (and then I inform the editor toute de suite.)
... our uninhibited lovemaking was new and surprising. (And that's all that's said about it! "new and surprising.")
... as she sat across the wooden table from me, her coat and scarf still on, I got lost in her physical self -- entranced might be the word -- as if I were memorizing her. This no doubt doesn't speak well for me: shouldn't one live fully in the moment. (Why should it speak badly of him? It's sort of difficult to live fully in the moment during an infatuation. Living in the moment is overrated anyway.)
I just sensed - perhaps incorrectly - that Norman wasn't comfortable writing these memoir-essays. He got the information down, diary-like, then left it. But I don't know.
This has nothing to do with literary quality, but have to mention that I found a copyeditor's note left in the text (Kindle version; print, too I wonder?): {{DEANNE: reader should know what he's wearing; I asked this earlier and got no response}}
That's an embarrassing gaffe for the publisher and the first I've come across except when I'm indexing (and then I inform the editor toute de suite.)
October 5, 2013
This memoir is the first book I've read by this author but it won't be the last. At first it seemed a pleasant read but I soon came to appreciate his insight and the sheer beauty of some of his phrasing. A mix of everyday life and more dramatic occurances interspersed with philosophical musings and natural history observations it ends with gut-wrenching reactions to a tragedy that occured in his family home, not family-related but it definately affected the family. Yes, that is an extremely long sentence.
December 1, 2023
Beautifully written
Norman the events of each chapter right from the start. Then slowly he reveals to the reader the intricate details of that period of life
Norman the events of each chapter right from the start. Then slowly he reveals to the reader the intricate details of that period of life
March 17, 2014
An interesting read of Howard Norman's life.
I have an interest in Inuit tales, and first met Howard Norman as a writer in children's books - "the girl who dreamed only geese: and other tales of the Far North" and "Between heaven and earth: bird tales from around the world".
Okay, I have to do it: here's an excerpt from the book (not typical, I admit, but my favorite pages):
A poem by Lucille Amorak, an Inuit in her seventies:
My aunt held a grudge - she forgot why.
My cousin held a grudge - he forgot why.
My father held a grudge - he forgot why.
Lots of things happened in the village,
lots of things.
People were born - people died - gulls
were everywhere all the time -
the beach and the big boulders on the beach
stayed put.
My cousin lived in another village
and she held a grudge - she forgot why.
I held a grudge - it was against a seal - because
that seal nabbed a fish right off my line!
I don't hold that grudge anymore
but at least I remember why I once did.
My other uncle held a grudge - he forgot why.
My other aunt held a grduge - it was against me.
One day I walked over to her house and said,
"What's your grudge?" "I forgot," she said.
"It was fun holding it," she said, "then it wasn't
any longer."
We sat down for a meal. My aunt was in
a pretty good mood - she laughed a lot -
I forgot what about.
I have an interest in Inuit tales, and first met Howard Norman as a writer in children's books - "the girl who dreamed only geese: and other tales of the Far North" and "Between heaven and earth: bird tales from around the world".
Okay, I have to do it: here's an excerpt from the book (not typical, I admit, but my favorite pages):
A poem by Lucille Amorak, an Inuit in her seventies:
My aunt held a grudge - she forgot why.
My cousin held a grudge - he forgot why.
My father held a grudge - he forgot why.
Lots of things happened in the village,
lots of things.
People were born - people died - gulls
were everywhere all the time -
the beach and the big boulders on the beach
stayed put.
My cousin lived in another village
and she held a grudge - she forgot why.
I held a grudge - it was against a seal - because
that seal nabbed a fish right off my line!
I don't hold that grudge anymore
but at least I remember why I once did.
My other uncle held a grudge - he forgot why.
My other aunt held a grduge - it was against me.
One day I walked over to her house and said,
"What's your grudge?" "I forgot," she said.
"It was fun holding it," she said, "then it wasn't
any longer."
We sat down for a meal. My aunt was in
a pretty good mood - she laughed a lot -
I forgot what about.
July 30, 2014
This is not a difficult book, but a slow, meditative read. And as with so many other books of this type (memoir-essay), I find myself wondering how its construction adds to the whole. How do the somewhat slight-seeming individual chapters slowly build to the powerful, albeit quiet, conclusion? Lovely.
March 3, 2015
I think that Howard Norman thinks he's far more interesting than he really is. He has a weird obsession with birds that doesn't really tie in to most of the stories he tells in this memoir... and yet he still finds ways to bring it up. He calls this book "I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place" and yet most of the palces he describes are terrible places that anyone would want to leave. Howard jumps through years and decades of his life to share moments that he thinks seem to relate - but I don't always see the link. I found his miscreant outlaw of a little brother to be far more intriguing of a main character. What saved this book for me was the murder-suicide of his friend and her son, while they were house-sitting, and how they were visited upon by this tragedy, and haunted quite literally by their ghosts. I wonder what it's like to have Howard Norman as a professor...
December 2, 2013
Howard Norman is an awesome memoir writer. I was totally wrapped up in whatever he was writing about at the time: his mis-adventures as a 15-year-old, observing birds in all their glory, bidding at an auction for an art print when he has no money, sparring with his brother (hooo-yeee: his brother provides more than enough fodder for a separate book!), interacting with the Inuit people, and coping with catastrophes. The title comes from an Inuit legend of a man who turns into a goose, and his migration song is, "I hate to leave this beautiful place." I felt that way at the end of the book.
December 2, 2013
A dreamy memoir, more of a gathering of events that the author has lived through. His dispassionate recollecting made them even more surreal: imagine seeing your father sitting at the diner counter time and again, when your mother has told you that he is no longer living in that town. Or imagine an adult sibling calling you repeatedly (collect) to request that you help him cross the border into Canada to escape the consequences of his white-collar crimes. And I will spare you the last, most disturbing event. Norman writes in a lovely way, but nothing of the book's contents lives up to the striking beauty and power of the title.
December 12, 2013
I had read good things about this book, and thought I'd read it. I really enjoyed about the first 3rd, liked the writing, liked the story. The author tells about his youth, but skips quickly to his 20's. And after reading a bit about his first love, and how he got started writing about birds, it was still interesting. But somewhere along the 20th time he mooned over his lost love, the story kind of changed for me. Great blanks were left between happenings, the writing got a bit dry, I just couldn't keep interested in the book. Got to be an itinerary and not anything to keep my interested.
November 22, 2014
A series of essays describing important experiences in the author's life. The first is set in Grand Rapids, MI when Norman was a boy. I could identify with much in this essay because we are about the same age. Some of the subsequent essays take place in Canada, including the far north where he lived with the Inuits for a while. He makes just about every character and setting a memorable one with his beautiful writing. I read The Bird Artistseveral years ago and liked it a lot, which is why I decided to read this one.
July 22, 2013
A creative writing professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, Norman 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. Like the best writers’ memoirs — I think of Hilary Mantel’s “Giving up the Ghost” and J.M. Coetzee’s “Boyhood” — this one grants memory the distance of irony. Norman the Memoirist is as wryly humorous and soulful as Norman the Novelist. Read the review: http://wapo.st/16UZVxZ
January 6, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/bo...
“Everything I loved most happened most every day.” is a nice thought to add to your life.
(note reread this Jan 2024 and put some notes into the kindle version and they can be seen on goodreads)
“Everything I loved most happened most every day.” is a nice thought to add to your life.
(note reread this Jan 2024 and put some notes into the kindle version and they can be seen on goodreads)
January 9, 2014
I read fiction almost exclusively, so to pick up a memoir takes me a bit out if my element. The writing was immediately accessible and engaging to me, and ultimately I am left with that old adage: why fiction? Life's unreal enough. Dark, poignant, sorrowful, comic. Ah, such is life.
December 18, 2017
A book about seemingly disjointed, but ultimately cohesive instances of meaning in a life. I loved it, but it did take me a very long time to get through it.
August 21, 2019
One of the best and most impeccably structured memoirs I've read, which probably means nothing since I'm so deep in the tank for Howard Norman I don't know which way is up.
April 22, 2024
This is a memoir of Canadian writer Howard Norman when he was a fledgling writer. Some of the tales are expected like that he bird watches and likes bird art (he wrote a book about an artist that paints birds). He attended Woodstock and has friends that were artists, musicians and actors including one that was a friend of Peter Lorre. The funniest part of the book is a rather manic period in his life where he keeps getting calls from a long lost brother asking him to take him across the Canadian border to avoid prison, and at the same time he keeps seeing a guy in his Vermont town with a Confederate uniform on. He is not sure if he is disassociating or if the guy actually exists. He eventually is encouraged to confront the person and finds out they are involved in reinactments. If you like Spike Jonz movies you would probably like this writer.
September 15, 2013
Ducks in a Row
In the introduction to his book, Howard Norman quotes twelfth-century Japanese poet Saigyo, who wrote, "A soul that is not confused is not a soul." Norman considers his own soul to be confused, but this book is his attempt to gain some clarity and keep his emothinal balance. Though he is loathe to attribute intrinsic themes to life, there does seem to be some recurring motifs here: Many of the stories are about having to leave places he has grown accustomed to, such as Point Reyes, Vermont, Nova Scotia, Sascatchewan, and the Arctic. Though the place is only mentioned in the introduction, The Villa of the Fallen Persimmons in Kyoto, Japan, where he wrote much of the book, seems like an especially haunting and beautiful place, and one that he would no doubt really hate to leave. Hence the title, I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place. In one of the five vignettes that make up the book, we learn that a soapstone carver who has turned into a goose, in an old Eskimo legend, begins to lament using those very words, translated from the goose language, when the geese begin to fly South for their winter migration.
Which brings us to the other recurring motif: All of the five stories concern a bird or birds--mostly shorebirds. There is a swan, there are Grey Geese Descending, The Maltese Falcon, Laughing Gull, Black-tailed Gannet, whooping cranes, fifty thousand sandhill cranes, peregrine falcons, piping plovers, burrowing owls, ferruginous hawks, loggerhead shrikes, terns, grebes, pelicans, hummingbirds, black-crowned night herons, yellow-headed blackbirds, belted kingfishers, red-necked phalaropes, American avocets, merlins, American kestrels, greater sage-grouses, prairie falcons, golden eagles, chestnut-collared longspurs, great crested flycatchers, ring-necked ducks, willow flycatchers, long-billed curlews, violet-green swallows, Baird's sandpipers, black-necked stilts, barred owls, golden-winged warblers, pile-ated woodpeckers, veeries, Cooper's hawks, migrant thrushes, great horned owls, hairy woodpeckers, gryfalcons, white pelicans, LeConte's sparrows and Say's phoebes, ravens, a kingfisher, an owl named Gertrude, and a western oystercatcher. All five vignettes also share a common protagonist, one assumes it is the author, Howard Norman. He grows a little bit each time, after confronting various "incidents of arresting strangeness."
The first story involves some fatherly advice, both from his actual father, and from his boss at his summer job at a library bookmobile. Let's not forget the swan. Next he is involved with an older, more accomplished woman. She wants to elope, but first they must come to an agreement about a painting called Grey Geese Descending. Her name is Mathilde, but little or no waltzing is involved. Next we find our hero on a quest to transcribe Eskimo folktales, but some of the Fear/horizon tales begin to haunt him, and he is also besieged by a local angakok, or shaman, who takes an instant disliking to him. While there tragedy strikes as news of the murder of John Lennon reaches them. This news strikes a local rock band hard as their band specialized in covering Lennon's music. In part IV, called "Kingfisher Days," he is plagued by fever, as he tries to have a well drilled by the local riff raff while fending off calls from his brother who wants to be smuggled into Canada. Finally, in the last incident of arresting strangeness, he lends his home to a poet and her son, and she ends up commiting a murder suicide there. He is thrown into a tailspin confronting the terrible event. Again, the shore birds come to his rescue when he goes to the beach to watch a western oystercatcher and meets a local photographer who is taking pictures of a dolphin carcass. She is married to a Tibetian Buddhist, and they help him see that death is just another part of the cycle of life.
At times his life reminds me of that Simon & Garfunkle song, The Dangling Conversation:
And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Indeed, not only is he living in Vermont at one point, which is Frost's country, but he is also studying a Frost poem, "A Servant of Servants," that he hopes will provide some solace for his confused soul. Sometimes, he gleans from this poem, the only way past our troubles is to go through them:
I’ve lain awake thinking of you, I’ll warrant,
More than you have yourself, some of these nights.
The wonder was the tents weren’t snatched away
From over you as you lay in your beds.
I haven’t courage for a risk like that. 170
Bless you, of course, you’re keeping me from work,
But the thing of it is, I need to be kept.
There’s work enough to do—there’s always that;
But behind’s behind. The worst that you can do
Is set me back a little more behind. 175
I sha’n’t catch up in this world, anyway.
I’d rather you’d not go unless you must.
There are referrences to the poems of Robert Hass, W. S. Merwin, François Villon, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and also Reetika Vazirani, the troubled poet who commited suicide in his house. At one point, deep in his fever, he falls under the spell of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, and imagines that a man who bears a striking resemblance to someone in one of the archival photographs is a ghost from that troubled part of American history. Though he spends a lot of time compiling a life list of birds he has seen, you could say that what he is really doing is just trying to get his ducks in a row.
In the introduction to his book, Howard Norman quotes twelfth-century Japanese poet Saigyo, who wrote, "A soul that is not confused is not a soul." Norman considers his own soul to be confused, but this book is his attempt to gain some clarity and keep his emothinal balance. Though he is loathe to attribute intrinsic themes to life, there does seem to be some recurring motifs here: Many of the stories are about having to leave places he has grown accustomed to, such as Point Reyes, Vermont, Nova Scotia, Sascatchewan, and the Arctic. Though the place is only mentioned in the introduction, The Villa of the Fallen Persimmons in Kyoto, Japan, where he wrote much of the book, seems like an especially haunting and beautiful place, and one that he would no doubt really hate to leave. Hence the title, I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place. In one of the five vignettes that make up the book, we learn that a soapstone carver who has turned into a goose, in an old Eskimo legend, begins to lament using those very words, translated from the goose language, when the geese begin to fly South for their winter migration.
Which brings us to the other recurring motif: All of the five stories concern a bird or birds--mostly shorebirds. There is a swan, there are Grey Geese Descending, The Maltese Falcon, Laughing Gull, Black-tailed Gannet, whooping cranes, fifty thousand sandhill cranes, peregrine falcons, piping plovers, burrowing owls, ferruginous hawks, loggerhead shrikes, terns, grebes, pelicans, hummingbirds, black-crowned night herons, yellow-headed blackbirds, belted kingfishers, red-necked phalaropes, American avocets, merlins, American kestrels, greater sage-grouses, prairie falcons, golden eagles, chestnut-collared longspurs, great crested flycatchers, ring-necked ducks, willow flycatchers, long-billed curlews, violet-green swallows, Baird's sandpipers, black-necked stilts, barred owls, golden-winged warblers, pile-ated woodpeckers, veeries, Cooper's hawks, migrant thrushes, great horned owls, hairy woodpeckers, gryfalcons, white pelicans, LeConte's sparrows and Say's phoebes, ravens, a kingfisher, an owl named Gertrude, and a western oystercatcher. All five vignettes also share a common protagonist, one assumes it is the author, Howard Norman. He grows a little bit each time, after confronting various "incidents of arresting strangeness."
The first story involves some fatherly advice, both from his actual father, and from his boss at his summer job at a library bookmobile. Let's not forget the swan. Next he is involved with an older, more accomplished woman. She wants to elope, but first they must come to an agreement about a painting called Grey Geese Descending. Her name is Mathilde, but little or no waltzing is involved. Next we find our hero on a quest to transcribe Eskimo folktales, but some of the Fear/horizon tales begin to haunt him, and he is also besieged by a local angakok, or shaman, who takes an instant disliking to him. While there tragedy strikes as news of the murder of John Lennon reaches them. This news strikes a local rock band hard as their band specialized in covering Lennon's music. In part IV, called "Kingfisher Days," he is plagued by fever, as he tries to have a well drilled by the local riff raff while fending off calls from his brother who wants to be smuggled into Canada. Finally, in the last incident of arresting strangeness, he lends his home to a poet and her son, and she ends up commiting a murder suicide there. He is thrown into a tailspin confronting the terrible event. Again, the shore birds come to his rescue when he goes to the beach to watch a western oystercatcher and meets a local photographer who is taking pictures of a dolphin carcass. She is married to a Tibetian Buddhist, and they help him see that death is just another part of the cycle of life.
At times his life reminds me of that Simon & Garfunkle song, The Dangling Conversation:
And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Indeed, not only is he living in Vermont at one point, which is Frost's country, but he is also studying a Frost poem, "A Servant of Servants," that he hopes will provide some solace for his confused soul. Sometimes, he gleans from this poem, the only way past our troubles is to go through them:
I’ve lain awake thinking of you, I’ll warrant,
More than you have yourself, some of these nights.
The wonder was the tents weren’t snatched away
From over you as you lay in your beds.
I haven’t courage for a risk like that. 170
Bless you, of course, you’re keeping me from work,
But the thing of it is, I need to be kept.
There’s work enough to do—there’s always that;
But behind’s behind. The worst that you can do
Is set me back a little more behind. 175
I sha’n’t catch up in this world, anyway.
I’d rather you’d not go unless you must.
There are referrences to the poems of Robert Hass, W. S. Merwin, François Villon, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and also Reetika Vazirani, the troubled poet who commited suicide in his house. At one point, deep in his fever, he falls under the spell of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, and imagines that a man who bears a striking resemblance to someone in one of the archival photographs is a ghost from that troubled part of American history. Though he spends a lot of time compiling a life list of birds he has seen, you could say that what he is really doing is just trying to get his ducks in a row.
July 26, 2024
This memoir of Howard Norman's life had its ups and downs in terms of interest for me, but overall I did enjoy it. I especially liked Norman's description of his boyhood summer where he worked in a bookmobile. I had read Howard Norman's book, The Bird Artist, many years ago. That book was quirky too.
June 22, 2021
This is a wonderful and gentle memoir. Only the last piece occasionally searching too hard? I don't know. Something about it just felt like it was not as good as the rest of the book. But recommended.
August 15, 2020
Hauntingly beautiful, this story in five distinct, place-based episodes over a period of five decades created a building, then slowly ebbing tension that left me feeling self-reflective. Taken together, the stories reaffirmed that the tricky and sad parts of life are not contrasts against joy but actually part of the melancholy blend that IS joy. I think this is the conclusion Norman came to while finishing the memoir in Inverness, California. It seemed putting on the page a trail of incidents that may seem random caused him to draw connections about life, self and others in a new way. This is the best possible outcome for a writer of memoir, and it was inspiring.
February 25, 2014
"The best way out is always through." Acclaimed novelist Howard Norman has appropriated this Robert Frost quote as the mantra for I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place. In this powerful memoir Norma reflects on five pivotal moments in his life beginning with his father's betrayal and ending with the consequences of a random violent act. For those familiar with his novels (The Bird Artist-The Museum Guard - The Haunting), this personal history sheds considerable light on where he gets the inspiration. I've always loved memoirs and this one is especially fine.
November 18, 2015
I wish I could give half a star more. I really enjoyed this book, at times, and at other times it felt like it dragged. I don't know if it was me or the subject matter because I don't typically read about these places and things. Yet, the opening stories of loss were so profound, so touching. And, there was much humor. At times, it felt like I was reading a Bill Bryson novel. I can completely relate to the sadness in this man's life as well as the way in which he pulls himself through each episode.
I do recommend this book, but come prepared for sadness.
I do recommend this book, but come prepared for sadness.
July 23, 2013
This memoir, by the author of The Bird Artist, was wonderfully written. It wasn't a memoir in the traditional sense, but more of a handful of essays about moments in the author's life that were significant and somewhat life-changing. It was an easy short read, but still quite powerful, poignant and bittersweet.
July 19, 2013
I have read several of Howard Norman's novels (he is an American who usually places his novels in Canadian settings) but this is a collection of memoir-essays of events that happened to him during his life in five different places. The essays are all somewhat quirky, but also very clearly written. The book is very different from his novels, but still very enjoyable.
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