Books by Anne Michaels
The Winter Vault
Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives.
In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for the dismantling and reconstruction of the temple as it’s rescued from the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. He is a “machine-worshipper,” yet exquisitely sensitive to the dichotomy of creation and destruction of which machines are capable. Jean is a botanist by avocation and passion, interested in everything that grows. They had met on the banks of the St. Lawrence River and watched together as the construction of the seaway changed the course of the river and swallowed towns, homes, lives. Now, at the edge of another world about to be lost forever, Avery and Jean create their own world, exchanging the “moments that are the mortar of our days, innocent memories we don’t know we hold until given the gift of the eagerness of another.”
But that gift will not be enough to bind them when tragedy strikes, and they will go back to separate lives in Toronto. Avery returns to school to study architecture, and Jean enters the life of Lucjan, a Polish émigré artist. Lucjan’s haunting stories of occupied Warsaw draw Jean further and further away from Avery. But, in time, he will also offer her the chance for forgiveness, consolation, and, finally, her own, most essential life.
Stunning in its explorations of both the physical and emotional worlds of its characters, intensely moving and lyrical, The Winter Vault is a radiant work of fiction.
Copies
No copies available.
Correspondences: A poem and portraits
A rare and beautifully produced "accordion" book by renowned novelist and poet Anne Michaels and acclaimed artist and writer Bernice Eisenstein that will cause a stir for both its form and its content.
Anne Michaels's resonant book-length poem--which unfolds on one side of the pages of this accordion book--ranges from the universal to the intimate, as she writes of historical figures for whom language was the closest thing to salvation; on the other side, we have Bernice Eisenstein's luminous portraits of and quotes from such twentieth-century writers and thinkers as Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, W. G. Sebald, Anna Akhmatova, Primo Levi, and Albert Einstein. The poetry and portraits join together in a dialogue that can be read in any direction and any order, in a format that perfectly reflects the thematic interconnectedness of this collaboration: "an alphabet of spirits and spirit; an elegy of remembrance" (Eisenstein); "just as a conversation becomes the third side of the page . . . the moment one life becomes another" (Michaels).
Copies
No copies available.
All We Saw: Poems
Poems of elegy in the aftermath of a great love from the internationally best-selling, award-winning novelist (Fugitive Pieces, The Winter Vault) and poet.
In All We Saw, Anne Michaels returns with strikingly original poems to explore one of her essential concerns: "what love makes us capable of, and incapable of." Here are the ways in which passion must accept, must insist, that "death . . . give / not only take from us." This piercing short collection treats desire in a style that is chaste, spare, figuratively modulated, and almost classical in its precision. In lyrics that ponder what happens to the bodies of lovers--so vital when together, different when apart, death coming to one before the other--Michaels embraces both the intimacy and the vastness of the connection between two people. Love's sheltering understanding is a powerful presence in all the poems, with its particular imagery (the ringing fog, the white page of the bed), as is the shattering loss of its end. With Michaels, we enter a space that is "not inside / not outside: dusk's / doorway," where memory might be kept alive.
Copies
No copies available.
Held
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 Aisne, 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 Re-ignite As The Century Unfolds. In Luminous 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-- Provided By Publisher.
Copies
No copies available.
Held: A novel
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.
Copies
No copies available.
Fugitive Pieces: A Novel
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the Lannan Literary Fiction Award
Winner of the Guardian Fiction Award
In 1940 a boy bursts from the mud of a war-torn Polish city, where he has buried himself to hide from the soldiers who murdered his family. His name is Jakob Beer. He is only seven years old. And although by all rights he should have shared the fate of the other Jews in his village, he has not only survived but been rescued by a Greek geologist, who does not recognize the boy as human until he begins to cry. With this electrifying image, Anne Michaels ushers us into her rapturously acclaimed novel of loss, memory, history, and redemption.
As Michaels follows Jakob across two continents, she lets us witness his transformation from a half-wild casualty of the Holocaust to an artist who extracts meaning from its abyss. Filled with mysterious symmetries and rendered in heart-stopping prose, Fugitive Pieces is a triumphant work, a book that should not so much be read as it should be surrendered to.
Copies
No copies available.
Railtracks
Railtracks is a unique collaboration between two writers of remarkable achievement. A profound meditation on railways, love and loss, at once intimate and committed, it moves from the industrial to the metaphysical, from the tectonic shifts of globalization to the interior pulses of memory, and from the present to a past that still exists in vivid, essential traces.
This sensual and exploratory dialogue is accompanied throughout by the evocative photography of Tereza Stehlíková, charting its own atmospheric passage by train through the forested, winter landscapes of Southern Bohemia.
Summoning potent, hidden histories and deeply personal journeys, Railtracks seeks, with a rigorous and reflective urgency, to bear witness to the pain of separations and the consolation of meetings.
Copies
No copies available.
The Winter Vault (Vintage International)
In The Winter Vault, award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels crafts a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, juxtaposing historic dislocations with the most intimate moments of individual lives.
In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for moving the temple above the rapidly rising waters of the Aswan Dam. At the edge of a world about to be lost forever, Avery and and his new wife Jean begin to create their own world. But it will not be enough to bind them when tragedy strikes and they go back to separate lives in Toronto. There Jean meets Lucjan, a Polish artist whose haunting stories of his shattered childhood in occupied Warsaw draw her further away from Avery. But, in time, he will also show her the way back to consolation and forgiveness.
Copies
No copies available.
Poems: The Weight of Oranges, Miner's Pond, Skin Divers
Prior to her stunning first novel, Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels had already won awards and critical acclaim for two books of poetry: The Weight of Oranges (1986), which won the Commonwealth Prize for the Americas, and Miner's Pond (1991), which received the Canadian Authors Association Award and was short-listed for the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Award. Although they were published separately, these two books, along with Skin Divers, a collection of Michaels's newest work, were written as companion volumes.
Poems brings all three books together for the first time, creating for American readers a wonderful introduction to Anne Michaels's poetry. Meditative and insightful, powerful and heart-moving, these are poems that, as Michael Ondaatje has written, "go way beyond games or fashion or politics . . . They represent the human being entire."
Copies
No copies available.