I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place

"There are memoirs that suffuse you in the events of the author’s life. And then there is the rare memoir that simply soaks you in the soul of the author himself. I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place is the latter. Howard Norman’s memoir is organized around five events that changed him — some are public, like the death of John Lennon, but most are intensely personal, culminating in a horrifying murder/suicide that occurred in his home and his recovery from the event. I read the book almost the way I would read poetry — reading line by line, making connections, thinking about how the language laid the life bare. To spend an hour or two inside Norman’s head is not only pleasurable; it feels like you’ve been sent a gift — go, make your connections, be human, love."