In the early 1970s, Sam Lattimore and Elizabeth Church met in an art gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They fell for each other and married and moved into a hotel, where, less than a year into their marriage, Elizabeth was murdered by a bellman who had become obsessed with her.
But though Elizabeth dies, she doesn’t leave her husband—not completely. She returns to him at night on a beach on a regular basis not far from a new place he’s rented. That’s the premise of the new novel by Howard Norman. Next Life Might Be Kinder is a novel about grief, love and perhaps even Sam Lattimore’s dreaded word, “closure.” Howard Norman is the author of several novels, including The Bird Artist and The Northern Lights, and a memoir, I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place.
VPR's Peter Biello speaks with Howard Norman about his new novel.
Broadcast on Wednesday, June 18, 2014 at 7:49 a.m.
