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A Novel
by Anne Michaels
Book Reviewed by:A breathtaking and ineffable new novel from the author of the international best sellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault—a novel of love and loyalty across generations, at once sweeping and intimate
1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night.
1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand.
So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and reignite as the century unfolds. In radiant moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.
Held is affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom, and compassion, a novel by a writer at the height of her powers.
IV
RIVERORWELL,
SUFFOLK, 1984
At the back of the shop, Peter sat at a large table, the Anglepoise leaning over him, as if searching for errors in his work. He heard the front door open, with its bell on a hinge, and a voice call out: "On Amsterdam Island, it's 4:01 p.m.; in Perth, it's 11:01 p.m.; in Alert, it's 10:01 a.m.!" He looked up. Thank God. She was home.
* * *
He held her. She was long, like a pine marten, a single pure muscle.
All in one piece. Thank God.
* * *
Peter closed the shop. They went upstairs. He did not want her to know how much he'd missed her. Whenever Mara was away—saturated, silted with fear for her. Unbearable.
"I missed you," Mara said. "Miss me?" His tears seeping out.
She held him, squeezed the life into him. "Dad," she said. "Dad. Don't worry, I'm staying."
He wept like a child.
* * *
She brought out the griddle.
They ate pancakes for supper because it was a tradition between them when she came home and because she liked the glass bottle of maple syrup with ...
Anne Michaels, once Toronto's poet laureate, employs a nontraditional narrative structure and tells this story in accomplished prose that engages the reader effortlessly; it's difficult not to inhale this strange, lovely novel in a single sitting. At a slim 200 pages, Held appears to be an ambitious project with its numerous locations and large cast of characters, but Michaels rises to the challenge she has set herself—everything is deliberate and nothing is underdeveloped. Though each reader is bound to take away something different from this thematically rich work, the compassion and tenderness this novel has for its characters and their complicated relationships feels like this novel's most profound gift...continued
Full Review
(519 words)
(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
Anne Michaels's compelling novel, Held, couldn't be more timely: war and its damages, passed through generations over a century. Through luminous moments of chance, change, and even grace, Michaels shows us our humanity—its depths and shadows. Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle
I was blown away by the scale, beauty, weave and thinking of this book ... It dances with words, time and ideas in a way that seems to reinvent everything I know about the novel ... and it's such a transporting read too. It's exquisite—I am in awe.
The friendship between Hertha Ayrton and Marie Curie is explored in Anne Michaels's multigenerational novel Held. Although Marie Curie is a household name, Aryton's fascinating life is likely unfamiliar to most readers.
Born in 1854 in Portsea, England, Hertha Ayrton was born as Phoebe Sarah Marks. Levi Marks, a clockmaker from Poland, had been forced to flee to England to escape anti-Semitic persecution. When he died in 1861, leaving his family in a significant amount of debt, his wife, seamstress Alice Theresa Marks, did her best to raise Phoebe Sarah, who at the time went by Sarah, and her six siblings (soon to be seven), but struggled under the pressure. At nine years old, Sarah went to live with Marion Hartog, her mother&#...
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