My Famous Evening : Nova Scotia Sojourns, Diaries, and Preoccupations (National Geographic Directions) [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Howard Norman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

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 goal: 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.''

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Norman shares his decades-long love affair with Nova Scotia in this latest addition to the National Geographic Directions series. Having traveled to the island in 1979 for work on a documentary film script, the author of The Bird Artist and The Northern Lights returns over the years, collecting myths and memories. In the book's first section, Norman relives the wanderlust of a young village woman, Marlais Quire, through the 1923 letters she writes to her sister. Enraptured with Joseph Conrad's work, Quire follows the writer to New York against her husband's wishes and her own better judgment. Quire never meets Conrad, but the struggle with her controlling husband and her literary passions lends insight to Nova Scotian smalltown life in the early 20th century. Later, Norman shares a number of stories about forerunners, eerie omens of tragedy well known to seafaring communities: "Forerunners, it seems to me, are examples of belief naturally infused with melancholy." Norman's love of bird-watching leads him to another folktale, concerning a mythic creature who protects locals from a troublesome bird that stirs up dangerous weather for oceangoers. Through his aviary interest, Norman also forges a friendship with Sandra Barry, a fellow bird-watcher and expert on the life of poet Elizabeth Bishop, who, as a child, was sent to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia. The two retrace Bishop's steps: "I had wanted to sit all night in the kitchen of Elizabeth Bishop's house, candles lit, conversation between [my wife] and Sandra a kind of séance, bringing Miss Bishop into the present." Norman's collection is an out-of-the-ordinary pastiche of personal recollections and historical sketches. Map not seen by PW.-- and Sandra a kind of seance, bringing Miss Bishop into the present." Norman's collection is an out-of-the-ordinary pastiche of personal recollections and historical sketches. Map not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Norman writes delectably atmospheric novels set in the snowy and mysterious reaches of Canada, such as The Haunting of L. (2002), and he now pays tribute to the landscape he loves the most, that of Nova Scotia, where "the distance between unconscious and conscious is scarcely noticeable." Several passions shape these gorgeously evocative, idiosyncratic, and witty musings. One is Norman's ardor for birds. Another is his keen interest in folklore, which led to his once scouring the region for stories about forerunners, that is, signs of impending disasters, as well as tales about the Mi'kmaq hero Glooskap. And, finally, there's his abiding love for literature. This inspires him to profile a freelance scholar devoted to chronicling poet Elizabeth Bishop's Nova Scotia childhood and to tell the astonishing story of a Nova Scotia woman who left her family to make the arduous journey to New York City to hear Joseph Conrad read. Rich in mystery, irony, and beauty, Norman's unique homage to Nova Scotia and its people is exactly what literature about place should be: utterly transporting. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• ISBN-10: 0792266307
• ASIN: B0002X1JP0
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,171,974 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

3 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not impressed.., September 15, 2009

By 

L. F. Kittay (Corpus Christi, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Famous Evening: Nova Scotia Sojourns, Diaries, and Preoccupations (Directions) (Hardcover)

The author of this book is highly self absorbed and impressed with who he thinks he knows. This books has a lot of literary references as filler that have no relationship to Nova Scotia or the kind and simple people who reside there. The letters depicted in the 1st chapter are far more interesting in their style and humor than the author's own writing. Not sure where the title of this book comes from. The author is famous in his own mind and it doesn't translate well on the pages of this book or do justice to this very beautiful and scenic area.