Devotion [Hardcover]

Howard Norman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 8, 2007

Fans of Howard Norman, the internationally acclaimed author of The Hunting of L and The Bird Artist and a two-time National Book Award finalist, will find in his latest novel -- an intense and intriguingly unconventional love story -- all the hallmarks of this masterly writer: sparkling yet spare language, a totally compelling air of mystery spread over our workaday world, and ability to capture the metaphorical heartbeat at the center of our lives.

Like many of Howard Norman’s celebrated novels, Devotion begins with an announcement of a crime: on August 19, 1985, David Kozol and his father-in-law engaged in “assault by mutual affray.” Norman sets out to explore a great mystery: why seemingly quiet, contained people lose control. David and Maggie's story seemed straightforward enough; they met in a hotel lobby in London. For David, the simple fact was love at first sight. For Maggie, the attraction was similarly sudden and unprecedented in intensity. Their love affair, "A fugue state of amorous devotion," turned into a whirlwind romance and marriage. So what could possibly enrage David enough that he would strike at the father of his new bride? Why would William, a gentle man who looks after an estate -- and its flock of swans -- in Nova Scotia, be so angry at the man who has just married his beloved only child, Maggie? And what would lead Maggie to believe that David has been unfaithful to her? In his signature style -- haunting and evocative -- Norman lays bare the inventive stupidities people are capable of when wounded and confused.

At its core, Devotion is an elegantly constructed, never sentimental examination of love: romantic love (and its flip side, hate), filial love at its most tender, and, of course, love for the vast open spaces of Nova Scotia.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the same calm, revelatory manner in which he wrote The Bird Artist, Howard Norman begins Devotion by telling of an event and then moving forward and backward from it. On August 19, 1985, the day that David Kozol and Margaret Field return to London from their honeymoon, David and his father-in-law, William Field, are involved in a fracas that leaves Field in the hospital. Not until almost the end of the book do we find out the cause.

David's life began heading toward that moment when he first laid eyes on Margaret, traveling as a publicist with an orchestral ensemble, and fell instantly in love with her. They are married in a few months. David wants to write a book about his mentor, Josef Sudek, a Czech genius, and Margaret enjoys traveling with the orchestra, checking in daily with her father, who tends an estate in Nova Scotia owned by a Jewish couple, Stefania and Isador Tecosky, and the wounded swans who live there. After William is hurt, David takes over his estate duties but Margaret refuses to see him.

Norman brings these people and their disparate realities together by showing the real devotion that binds them to each other and to the swans. William and Margaret enjoy a strong filial bond, the Tecoskys are devoted to William and Margaret, and the swans provide the perfect metaphor for all the relationships: they have had their wings clipped so they cannot fly--and they mate for life. Norman is a born naturalist with an immense love for Nova Scotia, birds, and landscape combined with a towering literary capability to bring them all together in a quirky, interesting story. Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly

Norman's intriguing, if at times baffling, sixth novel opens with a fight between Canadians David Kozol and his father-in-law, William Field, outside a hotel in London "on the morning of August 19, 1985." That date is important—it's just days after Kozol's marriage to William's daughter, Maggie—and an ensuing accident seriously injures William, the caretaker of a Nova Scotia estate on the north shore of the Bay of Fundy. The result is a particularly strange domestic situation: Kozol assumes William's duties on the estate; Maggie refuses to see her husband; William vows revenge on his son-in-law. Uncovering why the men were fighting and what separates the young couple drives the plot. Norman (The Bird Artist) uses the avian world as a counterpoint to the human one. William is devoted to the swans on the estate; Maggie wants in her own life the kind of devotion the swans embody. This quirky story deals with a powerful theme: how love endures despite our best efforts to sabotage it. Author tour. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; None edition (February 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618735410
• ISBN-13: 978-0618735419
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,021,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

HOWARD NORMAN is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion. His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Vermont with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Swan Dive, March 7, 2007

By 

R. Rubenstein "RJR" (looking for a place) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Devotion (Hardcover)

In previous Norman novels and reminiscences, I have enjoyed the richness of interesting, well-developed characters doing wild things carefully. I have loved the uncompromising spirit of the author, and have counted him on my wish list, eagerly awaiting his next journey into the vast inner spacings of eastern Canada. It is, therefore, very sad for me to say that I feel I have lost a friend. I think the author has disappeared with a flight of wounded swans.
Devotion appears written with little distance from the main character. It appears written in drunken haste, ill-timed, in often stiltifed and forced prose. Norman wanely develops his Dosteyevskian 'idiot', places him in the anguishing half-light of passive resistance, makes him a voyeur to all but the swam, only with whom he can frolic in drunken embrace. But who cares. Not Norman nor I.
Firstly, the timing is off. Norman has lost, in the irony of the title, any 'devotion' he has had for the painstaking craftsmanship of his earlier works. The author of 'Northern Lights' and, of course his famous trilogy of exceptional prose, seems to have been forced to try to re-create his masterpieces for expedience's sake and for, I suspect, a whole kettle of yankee dollars. The book just does not work.
Two dimensional characters passionlessly embrace even before they are introduced. Who are these people seen only in half-light. Norman thinks he is still in control of his craft but he now writes with a flat, false pen. There is no drama, no pacing that can make important sequences come alive. Maggie's naked dance by the window is dull because Maggie is dull as is the voyeur David who is dull. Finally they touch, appear re-united in the car. This act, in a drama of people who cannot cause an action, should mean something to us.But Maggie, or is it David, or perhaps, Howard Norman who makes us feel one or both or all of them are holding a dead mackerel in their flaccid fingers?
There is greater passion about the swans. Its obvious Norman has given up on human contact. The passing mention of a woman who believes her swan to be a dead husband is more in keeping with this author's present passion. The only real scene in this story that masquerades as substance(and I suspect, like his character,was written with alcohol very close by) occurs when David wrestles with the swan and falls down drunk amidst swan dew. It is as close to drunken passion that the present-day Norman can affect.
Sadly, Norman obviously no longer cares. He is Roger Clemens trying to scratch out one more season well after his skills are gone His gifts are wilted.
Devotion, above all else, is a very dull read. Not until page 70 of this short work do we begin to see any movement. The plot,an accident...a misunderstanding in a hotel room, a punch in the mouth? Wow,oh my, what heart-stopping drama!. Like David, his protagonist, Norman now is now disappeared behind the camera lense. His prose, like his protagonist's actions; indeed, like all his characters seems irksome and stilted--forced and banal.
I need more, Howard Norman, if I am to pay twenty dollars to read you again. Where's your.....honesty, your.....devotion?

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I'll forgive and forget, but I'll remember.", March 4, 2007

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Devotion (Hardcover)

Imagery is central to Devotion, the issue of communication couched in a broken romance. The novel begins with an altercation between David Kozol and his father-in-law, William. Suffering of late from the estrangement of his wife, Maggie, David has not quite ascertained how to rectify his marital predicament. It is assumed that some form of infidelity is at fault in the severing of trust, the two men possessing conflicting views in regards to the state of the marriage, David's father-in-law siding naturally with his disappointed daughter.

The fast-forward romance between the newlyweds is as passionate as their current distance is poignant, the attraction immediate and mutual from the start, two Canadians meeting by chance in London. Later, back in Nova Scotia after the accident, David's supposed misdeed hanging over the relationship like a dark shadow, the new husband takes over William's estate management duties. The estate is owned by an elderly couple and serves as a refuge for swans, the mute birds central to the story and indicative of the ambiguity of form and intent. For though they are majestic, the swans are ill-tempered and difficult, much like humans. These particular humans fumble through a tripartite relationship, where father serves as buffer for daughter, the lack of communication among the parties stunning. Clearly David and Maggie are victims of their impulsiveness; it is that same impetuousness that causes them to pull apart in adversity rather than come together in solution.

In eloquent prose, the author casts his characters in the picturesque Nova Scotia, the honking swans, the distance between the lovers accented by the haunting rural landscape. Love being more powerful than enforced isolation, David and Maggie eventually navigate the rocky ground of their fledgling marriage, toward a resolution of differences and a strong dose of forgiveness. Luan Gaines/2007.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for those who love this author, February 8, 2007

By 

Hank (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Devotion (Hardcover)

If you are a fan, do not hesitate, Norman's new book is beautifully written and very consistent with the unique point of view and perspective his narrators always provide. My only complaint is that it's a slim volume.