My Famous Evening: Nova Scotia Sojourns, Diaries, and Preoccupations

by Howard Norman

Master storyteller Howard Norman draws on more than 30 years of visiting Nova Scotia for this remarkable ''book of selective memories.'' Combining stories, folklore, memoir, nature, poetry, and expository prose, the chapters of  My Famous Evening  ''may be seen as intersecting facets of reminiscence; there are certain refrains, themes, and preoccupations and I placed birds into as many of the book's nooks and crannies as possible.'' His to portray the emotional dimensions of his experience.

Illustrated with photographs from Norman's own collection, this book offers a delightful, witty, and characteristically quirky take on a curious and beguiling region.

Read the story of Marlais Quire, a young woman who scandalously left her home in Nova Scotia in 1923 to travel to New York in an ill-fated attempt to attend a public reading by Joseph Conrad. Enjoy the delightful ''Birder's Notebook,'' a collection of stories about the Mi'kmaq cultural hero, Glooskap, and an account of Leon Trotsky's 1915 visit to Halifax, after a year in exile in New York, ''on his way to the October Revolution.'' For Norman, Nova Scotia is a place that provides a deep calm but also a ''sudden noir of the heart.''

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Essays, Canada

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2004

About the author

Howard 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.

Reviews

[Doris Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this author. I love Nova Scotia!!!! Got my new motto from this book: hold still - keep moving.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really checks all the boxes for me. It looks at Nova Scotia through a variety of lenses: local history, birding, folklore, poet Elizabeth Bishop, photographer Robert Frank. Norman, who is American, has a long and close relationship with the province, so you feel you’re with an excellent and trusted guide, and there’s a nice, easy intimacy in the way he writes.

I’m always interested in reading about the Canadian Maritimes, and there was a particularly strong resonance in this read, following a recent visit to Nova Scotia. It left me with notes of places and things to explore on the next trip.

This is not the first of the National Geographic Directions books I’ve enjoyed. It’s a marvelous series. There were a few typos that were overlooked—surprising ones, given the publisher—like Finlay Point being referred to multiple times as Findlay Point and then sometimes with its correct name, or Worcester, MA, being spelled Worchester.

This is, however, the first Howard Norman book I’ve read, and I’m ready for more.

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really don't know what to make of this quirky little book. Because of familial ties to Nova Scotia, I was drawn to the title immediately. I think I was expecting little vignettes of Nova Scotia life. Instead, the book is broken down into oddly disparate mini-books on a variety of really obscure subjects. I was taken aback, and put the book aside a number of times. However, each time I kept picking it up again and reading a little further. It took me a month to finish a 200 page book.
Not every subject worked for me. I got bored in the chapters called Love, Death and the Sea and Driving Miss Barry. On the other hand, I found the chapter called My Famous Evening weirdly compelling. I didn't know about Leon Trotsky's time in Halifax and thought that was interesting. Such variable subjects made for an uneven but intimately interesting book.

[John Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Howard Norman says he likes to write his books "on a slant" and that is true of this book. Most of his novels are set in Canada, primarily Nova Scotia, but he himself is American. In this book, he tells different stories about Nova Scotia, approaching each in a different way. He includes 5-6 stories, several involving famous authors; others explore Native and white folk cultural patterns; while another brings out his passion of bird watching. Through all of these "slanted" stories, we get a picture of different elements of the people and landscape of Nova Scotia.

[Kati Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe my favorite of this series? And I’m not even that interested in birds (Norman is VERY into birds).

[Kelly Greenwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

An eclectic collection, all with a Nova Scotia connection. I really enjoyed some, and was lukewarm on others. I am intrigued by a "come from away" with such interest and passion for Nova Scotia.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, beautiful, lyrical book!

[Mycala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I shouldn't have started this series with Oliver Sacks, as it's probably not fair to everyone I read after him. Now having read this one, I realize that they are not all going to be in the same format. The book is divided into sections (my first thought was to write "scattered," but while the format doesn't seem cohesive to me it does appear that thought was put into the sections) and my favorite by far was the first -- the letters written by a woman to her sister as she went on a trip that shouldn't have been all that scandalous, except that in her day it cost her the ability to live with her children when she returned. It is sad to think how religion and societal expectations imprisoned this poor woman and it makes me glad to live when I do... although, that being said we do have a long way to go, baby.

He lost me when he got to the section about the birds. I like birds a lot, too. Obviously not as much or as intimately as he does. That's okay -- I'm not criticizing, it's just not my thing. Certainly not this much. The folklore was interesting in a "what just happened?!" sort of way.

The part about the poet was good as well. Several of her admirers went to the home where she had lived and discussed her work and her life. Some of the locals seemed surprised and dismayed that she had shared so much of her private life with those "from away." Ultimately of course, it was her life and her story to tell and if she wished to share it... Interesting how people try to claim someone as their own, instead of allowing him or her to be who they are sometimes. Families do it, towns do it, countries do it. "Their work is ours and no one else should enjoy it." Why?

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

an idiosyncratic chronicle of traveling and or living in nova scotia. in 3 parts, one of which is a series a letters from a lady there in 1920's who loved loved loved conrad and when she heard he was speaking in nyc, she went to capital to book passage, while waiting for her ship her husband showed up, with a pistol, and it was foggy, and the cops started shooting at him. wife ran off in the fog, and finally got a ship, thinking, while sailing to nyc to see joseph conrad, that hubby was dead and her kids half-orphans because of her. she got to new york and conrad was in a rich lady's salon, so no entrance for a new scotia hick.
one part too has a list of birds you would see there.
wonderful and lots of glooksap stories too.
this is part of a national geographic series pairing great writers to great places like barry unsworth in crete Crete and jan morris in wales A Writer's House in Wales
i think though, the series is no more. pity.