I was initially attracted to Howard Norman's memoir "I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place" simply due to the dual geographical coincidence of Norman's childhood spent in Michigan and his adult summers spent in Calais Vermont, a locale a mere few miles from where my library career began. Yet when a patron also mentioned that it was also a very good read, I finally took the time to pick-up this slender volume. And once I did, I could not put it down. This readability does not though, grow out of an arresting narrative arc. In fact, pinpointing the narrative arc of "I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place" proves rather difficult. Instead, Norman's tale reads more like a collection of loosely related reminisces or episodes that are in his own words "incidents of arresting strangeness."
The first chapter of his life that Norman turns to, is a boyhood summer spent working in a bookmobile in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In addition to hours spent checking books in and out, Norman also spends time each day watching his absentee father while away his day at the counter of an apothecary.
Chapter two finds Norman in Nova Scotia in a post high school wander where he falls in love with an intense and brilliant painter only to lose her to a plane crash.
Eventually, in chapter three, Norman lands in the Canadian Northwest where he works as a folklorist recording Inuit stories. Slowly but surely however, these stories begin to work on Norman's conscious and these effects in conjunction with the ill-will of an angakok, a shaman, who hates non-Inuits, forces him to take leave of yet another beautiful place.
Chapter four occurs in Calais, Vermont where Norman experiences a persistent and incurable fever that warps his grip on reality for months leading to the final and most assuredly strange chapter of Norman's life in which an acquaintance poet, who is house sitting Norman's Washington D.C. home for the summer, commits suicide after murdering her child within their home. Struggling with whether or not he and his family can possibly live in the house again, he finally determines that, as Robert Frost stated, "the best way out is always through."
This sort of understated, yet deep insight along with poignant literary and intellectual allusion are what give "I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place" its power. Throughout his remembering and telling, Norman never foists his themes or acumen upon the reader. Instead, he allows his writing and those reading it to develop conclusions of their own. This ability to share in an experience and understanding while making it ones own is quite possibly the most satisfying aspect of "I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place." However, it is more than rivaled by Norman's fantastic ability to capture the tragic and humorous and to present both to the reader in language that leaves one breathless. This is indeed, a highly recommended read.
