The Ruptures of History

Canadian writer Anne Michaels established a reputation as a top-notch poet. Born on April 15, 1958, in Toronto, Ontario, she made her literary debut in 1986 with the publication of the poetry collection The Weight of Orange. It was critically received, earning Michaels the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas and announcing the arrival of a new literary star. She backed up her initial success with her sophomore poetry collection, Miner’s Pond. Published in 1991, the book earned Michaels more accolades; it won her the Canadian Authors’ Association Award the same year. The book was also a finalist for the Governor General’s and Trillium awards. The critical success earned by Michaels’ first two books established her as a household literary name. It also consolidated her status as one of Canada’s leading poets.

Michaels is a titan in poetry and was even designated as the poet laureate of Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 2016 to 2019. However, it was another form of writing that established her as a global literary star. Like most writers, Michaels yearns to push the boundaries of her writing. She wanted to expand into uncharted territories. She seized the moment by publishing her first novel, Fugitive Pieces, in 1996. Her debut novel raked in more accolades for Michaels in her native Canada. It won the Trillium Book Award and the Books in Canada First Novel Award. It also elevated Michaels to international acclaim, winning Britain’s Orange Prize for Fiction and America’s Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. It was also longlisted for the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award. Her sophomore novel, The Winter Vault (2009), further underscored her mettle as a prose writer. The book was also longlisted for the

In 2023, Michaels made her long-awaited prose comeback – she published poetry collections in the intervening period – with the publication of her third novel, Held. In her latest novel, Michaels transports us first to France. The year was 1917. The First World War was still brewing. In the trenches of the battlefield was a wounded soldier named John; he was wounded during the battle of Cambrai. Lying next to his fallen comrade and friend Gillies, he was slipping in and out of consciousness, uncertain if he would perish or live to see another day. It was at this juncture that his shocked mind started playing tricks. He hovered between real-time observations and humbled images of the past. One memory takes precedence, that of his fateful encounter with a girl one night at an inn adjacent to the railway station. He fell in love instantly. He also thinks about his mother and the women back home on the Yorkshire coast who knit sweaters with intentional flaws. He contemplates: We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?

There are so many ways the dead show us they are with us. Sometimes they stay deliberately absent, in order to prove themselves by returning. Sometimes they stay close and then leave in order to prove they were with us. Sometimes they bring a stag to a graveyard, a cardinal to a fence, a song on the wireless as soon as you turn it on. Sometimes they bring a snowfall.

  Anne Michaels, Held

Surrounded by carnage, he shivers from the cold. John worries about dying unwashed by the waves of the North Sea and having nothing to set him apart. Miraculously, John survives. The story then moves forward to 1920. From the battlefield with only an injured leg being the only physical reminder of the war, John returned home to North Yorkshire, on River Esk, where he set up his photography business. John specialized in formal portraits of soldiers returning from war who wanted to disguise or hide their injuries; war hovered above the story. His vocation Helena, his wife, and the girl he met at the railway station is a skilled artist who painted glorious backdrops. Business was going well. Life was going well too. John and Helena were both healing from the wounds of the past. They lived above the photography studio where John doted over his wife, showering her with love even sans any demand from her.

When things start to take on a natural and familiar harmony, life throws one of its curveballs into the couple’s direction. Enter Robert Stanley. Robert claims to have gone to the war, prompting John to hire him as his assistant. However, there were discrepancies in his testimonies. He cannot provide proof that he was in the war. He was also secretive. Nevertheless, Robert and John managed to create a workable relationship. Things started going awry when ghostly apparitions started to emerge in the pictures that John developed. The images were vivid despite the pictures being taken in a studio occupied by no one else but the subject. These were no ordinary apparitions; upon John’s confirmation with his subjects, they were relatives of the subjects who had already passed away. These apparitions initially fascinated him, believing in a spiritual presence. However, an act of betrayal puts John into a tailspin.

The act of betrayal not only puts John’s life into a tailspin, but it creates a wedge between him and his wife. Helena was deprived of the love she once received freely. With time a construct, the story moves forward three decades later. The year was 1951. Helena, who used to be an artist who doubted her talent, has reinvented herself. This also marked a critical shift in the story’s direction as the focus shifted to the women in John’s life. When Helena was posing nude for an artist, we learn about her and John’s daughter, Anna; Anna was born to the couple following the turbulent period. Anna was introduced along with her husband, Peter. Peter was a Marxist from Piedmont who made exquisite hats. A doctor, Anna had a fixation with warzones which prompted her to work at the battlefield, breaking her husband’s heart.

The third generation of Helena and John’s family was Mara, the only daughter of Anna and Peter. Like her mother before her, Mara pursued a career in medicine. Also, like her mother, Mara refused to be anchored to the ground. She was drawn to the tumult of the warzone, even planning to return to conflict zones and assist her colleagues after her pregnancy; the year was 1984. Her partner, Alan, was naturally distressed. When will this cycle end? The story, however, does not only focus on John and Helena’s family as more characters are introduced. In the 1980s Estonia, we are introduced to Paavo and Sofia who first met in a café. Like John and Helena before them, they were starcrossed loves who felt an instant connection during their first meeting. In 1910, in Sceaux, France, we meet Lia, a grieving widow, who met a photographer during one of her walks in the forest.

We think of history as moments of upheaval when forces converge, the sudden upthrust of the ground we’re standing on, catastrophe. But sometimes history is simply detritus: midden mounds, ghost nets, panoramic beaches of plastic sand. Sometimes both: a continual convergence of stories unfolding too quickly or too gradually to follow; sometimes, too intimate to know.

  Anne Michaels, Held

One of the elements that sets Held apart is its unusual structure. Sans preambles, the story weaves in and out of different periods as it charts the fortunes of the main characters and those who orbit around them. This cycle of starting and restarting all over again was perfectly captured by one of Mara’s remarks. Also a wide book reader, Mara remarked that they begin again at the middle, the way life so often did. This statement captures Michaels’ refusal to conform to literary conventions. With each chapter – the story is divided into twelve chapters – not only does time constantly leap forward and move backward, but the story also begins over again. Each chapter is a vignette, capturing fragments of the characters’ lives. This seemingly eccentric and non-linear narrative structure – echoes of Michaels’ literary provenance- however, it divided the opinions and sentiments of readers and critics alike.

Despite seemingly disjointed, the novel’s fragmented structure is thematically linked. A prevalent theme is war. The novel’s various settings are situated in multiple war zones. The characters also gravitated toward or had histories with conflict zones. Mara, for instance, felt duty-bound to serve on the frontlines. Alan, on the other hand, worked as a war correspondent. The shadow of the war loomed above everyone. Those who were at the frontlines suffered trauma that haunted them throughout their lives. Trauma was then down across generations. Destruction lingers at the seams. The novel also captures tyranny through the story of Paavo and Sofia. They lived under Estonia’s Communist regime, with Paavo remarking that with every tightening of the screw, the tyrant makes our hope more precise. And nothing enrages a tyrant more than hope. The regime limited Paavo’s artistic freedom; he was a composer. Sofia, on the other hand, cannot freely express her religious beliefs.

But despite the darkness hovering above the story, the characters find healing by establishing connections with people who love and care for them. Love is one of the threads that bound the story and the characters together. In the story, love is the antithesis of war. It was in love that characters found healing and comfort. It was where hope sprang eternal. Michaels was resplendent in capturing the intricacies of romantic relationships. She reserved her most affectionate writing for exploring the indelible connections between star-crossed lovers. John and Helena. Peter and Anna. Alan and Mara. Paavo and Sofia. They met at the most inopportune of times, at the intersection of war, destruction, and conflict. They fell in love at first sight and their first meetings were captured by Michaels with tenderness and vulnerability. It is their respective unions that helped them overcome the odds. They were brought together by fate and serendipity.

A germane leitmotif is photography. John was a photographer. Lia came across a photographer. In between them are several still images. One is a set of individuals from the war. One is a set of pictures capturing the streets of Saint-Séverin. The photographs taken by Lia’s photograph/lover resonate more in the context of history and the passage of time. It is a time-lapse spanning years, capturing the changes taking place in the city. Despite the stark dichotomy between the two photographers’ subjects, their photographic plates vividly immortalized a space of time that one can no longer go back to. Viewed from a different lens, these still images make the past always feel present. They are memories caught in stillness: In a long exposure, anyone who moves is invisible, only those who are still are perceivable. Even the novel as a whole is a tapestry of snapshots.

What does a mother say to her child when he wakes in the night, his soul sick with fear? That he is safe in her arms, loved by her forever, nothing can end this love she holds him in, love without end. And he looks into her face, the face of unalloyed love, and slowly he lets this love suffuse him, and they fall asleep in each other’s arms, old mother and grown son, separated by hundreds of miles.

  Anne Michaels, Held

Beyond star-crossed lovers and photography, history as a general subject loomed large in the story. Our view of history is dictated by various factors such as political and religious views. We tend to believe the history that is more in tune with our emotions. Michaels aptly points out how history is liminal, the threshold between what we know and can’t know. In creating a narrative that moves forward and backward, she was further challenging our understanding of history: To the historian, every battlefield is different; to the philosopher, every battlefield is the same. History is vast and this was captured as well. Glimpses of the characters’ personal histories were provided as well as a primer to the history of photography. There were also details of the women’s struggles for the recognition of their right to suffrage.

In one act of digression, we get to dine with Marie and Pierre Curie in 1908 Paris. They were with Ernest Rutherford, a pioneer of nuclear physics. The novel subtly underscores how science, along with the supernatural and mystical, can make our loved ones feel present even after death. As we join Michaels in her journey across time, one thing is palpable. Her mastery of language is sublime and is one of the novel’s finer elements. Her extensive background as a poet made the sentences and paragraphs flow. They were constructed with such beauty, appealing to the reader’s senses: We know life is finite. Why should we believe that death lasts forever? It was also this brand of writing that supplemented the philosophical intersections that permeate the story.

Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and the winner of the Giller Prize, Held is a kaleidoscopic saga across four generations of women. It is a lyrical story that covers a plethora of subjects such as war, conflicts, and tyranny. Michaels deftly captures how these dark elements can leave victims physically and emotionally damaged; some lead to grief and loss. History and memory, through vignettes and still images, were also prominently explored in the lyrical novel, and so were the insistent interactions between the living and the dead. Despite the pall hovering above the story, there remains hope. Love and establishing connections were germane in the characters’ healing. Held is anything but conventional; it is fragmented, even abstract. In its refusal to conform to literary conventions, Held sets itself apart.

Stories told on a battlefield, on a life raft, in a hospital ward at night. In a café that will disappear before morning. Someone overhears. Someone listens, attentive with all his heart. No one listens. The story told to one who is slipping into sleep, or into unconsciousness, never to wake. The story told to one who survives who will tell that story to a child, who will write it down in a book, to be read by a woman in a country or a time not her own. The story told to oneself. The fervent confession. The meandering, repetitive search for meaning in a gesture, in a moment that has eluded the speaker’s understanding for a lifetime. Stories incomprehensible to the listener yet received nonetheless – by darkness, by the wind, by a place, by an unperceiving or unperceived pity, even by indifference. What we give cannot be taken from us

  Anne Michaels, Held
Book Specs

Author: Anne Michaels
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Publishing Date: 2023
No. of Pages: 220
Genre: Historical, Literary

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Anne Michaels was born on April 15, 1958, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  She attended Vaughan Road Academy and then completed her Bachelor of Arts in Honours English at the University of Toronto, where she was later an adjunct faculty member in the Department of English.

Michaels is first and foremost a poet. Her literary career commenced with the publication of The Weight of Oranges, a collection of poetry, in 1986. The book was an immediate critical success that earned her various accolades. It won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. Her reputation as a poet was cemented by her sophomore poetry collection, Miner’s Pond (1991). It was nominated for the Governor General’s Award and won the Canadian Authors Association Award. Correspondences (2013) is a book-length poem and was shortlisted for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her latest poetry collection was All We Saw (2017). Michaels also published works of nonfiction such as Infinite Gradation (2017) which won the 2019 Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature in Non-Fiction; and children’s books such as The Adventures of Miss Petitfour (2015) and The Further Adventures of Miss Petitfour (2022).

In 1996, Michaels made a seamless transition to prose writing. She published her debut novel, Fugitive Pieces which many literary pundits consider as Michaels’ most defining work. It earned her various literary awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction, Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, Trillium Book Award, and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award (later the Amazon.ca First Novel Award). The book was also longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Like her debut novel, her sophomore novel, The Winter Vault (2009), was critically acclaimed. It was also longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Trillium Book Award. Her third and latest novel, Held (2023), won the Giller Prize and the Prix Transfuge du meilleur roman anglo-saxon. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

In October 2015, Michaels began her tenure as the poet laureate of Toronto, succeeding George Elliott Clarke. In 2023, she was elected as a Royal Society of Literature International Writer.