{"product_id":"i-hate-to-leave-this-beautiful-place-isbn-9780544317161","title":"I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place","description":"\u003cp\u003e“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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoward 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.” — \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.” — \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“Norman’s tale is conversational, elegant, and full of life…All Norman’s stories – even the last, of a tragedy visited on him and his family, another intimation of death-are related with grace. He shows that the pleasures of the memoir often lie not in a life of dramatic incident but in the flights and transfigurations of a contemplative mind.” - Jane Smiley, \u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHarper's\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e  \"Some books celebrate the human condition; others commiserate with us. This memoir does both, and offers fine, subtly fey companionship to boot.\" - Helen Oyeyemi, \u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNPR.org\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e  \"Five stellar personal essays by Norman that shed light on his melancholy, tragedy-struck fiction and larger human failures....A bracing, no-nonsense memoir, infused with fresh takes on love, death and human nature.\"  - STARRED \u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKirkus\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mariner Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890308215013,"sku":"NP9780544317161","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780544317161.jpg?v=1730233002","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/i-hate-to-leave-this-beautiful-place-isbn-9780544317161","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}