Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

NEXT LIFE MIGHT BE KINDER

Howard Norman

A novel of extraordinary emotional power - of a love-of-a-lifetime marriage, a murder, and its uncanny aftermathfrom National Book Award finalist Howard Norman.

"After my wife Elizabeth Church was murdered by the bellman Alfonse Padgett in The Essex Hotel, she did not leave me." Sam Lattimore meets Elizabeth Church in 1970s Halifax, in an art gallery. The sparks are immediate, leading quickly to a marriage that is dear, erotically charged, and brief. In Howard Norman's spellbinding and moving novel, the gleam of the marriage and the circumstances of Elizabeth's murder are revealed in heart-stopping increments. Sam's life afterward is complicated. For one thing, in a moment of desperate confusion, he sells his life story to a Norwegian filmmaker named Istvakson, known for the stylized violence of his films, whose artistic drive sets in motion an increasingly intense cat-and-mouse game between the two men. For another, Sam has begun "seeing" Elizabeth - not only seeing but holding conversations with her, almost every evening, and watching her line up books on a small beach. What at first seems simply hallucination born of terrible grief reveals itself, evening by evening, as something else entirely. A story of murder, desperate faith, the afterlife - and of love as absolute redemption.

Available products
Book Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Comments

Newlyweds Sam and Elizabeth create a zone of passion, both sexual and intellectual, in their apartment in a Halifax hotel in the early 1970s. Sam is writing his second novel and, for pay, new episodes for old radio shows. Elizabeth is working on her dissertation and learning the lindy. They are erotically bedazzled, steeped in the past, and deliriously happy. Then Elizabeth is murdered. Sam moves into a cottage by the sea, besieged by memories of what led to his beloved's violent death. Each night Elizabeth, calm and collected, appears on the beach, and they talk. Sam's therapist struggles to dismantle this delusion. Desperate for funds, Sam sold the film rights to his and Elizabeth's story. He now loathes the pretentious, manipulative director. While Sam struggles within a vortex of anger and sorrow, his neighbors, a designer and a librarian, offer provocative perspectives on situational ethics and how secrets are kept and revealed. Once again Norman (What Is Left the Daughter, 2010) portrays Nova Scotia as a mystical realm, where the dead haunt the living, and time is tidal. The inspiration for this dark, sexy, allusive, and diabolical tale is found in Norman's memoir, I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place (2013), further complicating the novel's eerie investigation into the yin and yang of verisimilitude and aberration.

"This latest novel, a strange and tragic love story told with great power and beauty, is a remarkable achievement Shining through the confusion and madness is Norman's masterly depiction of Sam and Elizabeth's love affair before the murder, showing two people living modest, quiet lives who are redeemed and blessed by having found real love. VERDICT An inspiring and beautiful book; enthusiastically recommended for fans of literary fiction."

Norman pulls off a fascinating balancing act here: the literary page-turner that, when it's done, you want to retrace his steps; to revisit Sam and Elizabeth during happier days. It's a poignant look at loss and at how memories transform into stories, helping us move forward into kinder days. Read more...

"an opening sentence worthy of the Noir Hall of Fame...provocative...haunting...deft"