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Anne Michaels

Teoksen Kivenkantajat tekijä

14 teosta 4,342 jäsentä 161 arvostelua 20 Favorited

Tietoja tekijästä

Anne Michaels was born in 1958 in Toronto, Canada. Her poetry and fiction has earned her several awards. "The Weight of Oranges," a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Prize for the Americas. Another collection of poetry, "Miner's Pond," won the Canadian Authors Association Award and was she näytä lisää shortlisted for the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Award. "Fugitive Pieces," her first work of fiction won her the Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the Year Award, the Trillium Prize, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, The Beatrice and Martin Fischer Award and the Orange Prize. She was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize. She is also a recipient of the National Magazine Award, for poetry, gold medal. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän

Includes the name: Anne Michaels

Image credit: (c) Caroline J McElwee

Sarjat

Tekijän teokset

Kivenkantajat (1996) 3,023 kappaletta
Routaholvi (2009) 666 kappaletta
The Adventures of Miss Petitfour (2015) 149 kappaletta
Weight of Oranges (1985) 94 kappaletta
Poems (2000) 91 kappaletta
Skin Divers (1999) 74 kappaletta
Held (2023) 65 kappaletta
All We Saw (2017) 46 kappaletta
Railtracks (2011) 36 kappaletta
Infinite Gradation (2017) 20 kappaletta
Miner's Pond (1991) 6 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Kanoninen nimi
Michaels, Anne
Syntymäaika
1958-04-15
Sukupuoli
female
Kansalaisuus
Canada
Syntymäpaikka
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Asuinpaikat
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Koulutus
University of Toronto (B.A. English)
Ammatit
academic
poet
Organisaatiot
Lannan Literary Award (Fiction, 1997)
Lyhyt elämäkerta
Anne Michaels, (b at Toronto 1958) the daughter of a Jewish-Polish immigrant, grew up in Toronto, and earned a BA in Honours English at the University of Toronto. Michaels's first novel, FUGITIVE PIECES (1996), brought her national recognition and awards, including the Trillium Prize and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award. The novel also garnered international acclaim, winning Britain's Orange Prize for Fiction and America's Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Robert FULFORD observed that Fugitive Pieces "attracted more international praise than any first novel by a serious writer in Canadian history." A film version of Fugitive Pieces, directed by Jeremy Podeswa, was produced in 2006.

Like Fugitive Pieces' protagonist Jakob Beer, Anne Michaels is also a poet. Her first collection, The Weight of Oranges, won the 1986 Commonwealth Prize for the Americas. Miner's Pond (1991) was short-listed for a GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD and won a Canadian Authors Association Award. Skin Divers was published in 1991. The poems from these three collections were published together, under the title Poems, in 2001.

Jäseniä

Keskustelut

Group Read, December 2017: Fugitive Pieces, 1001 Books to read before you die (joulukuu 2017)
Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels, World Reading Circle (tammikuu 2014)

Kirja-arvosteluja

This novel is a mystical novel. “Attunement, boundaries, boundaries crossed. A bare micrometer.” From the first verse of the eighth chapter, whose character, Paavo, seems surely based on the contemporary classical composer of mystical and sacred works, Arvo Pärt. “The precipice of one word placed next to another, one note next to another.” The poet, the composer; imagine an invisible “l” inserted into “word”: the mystic.

One world next to another and the invisible boundary between them. Other than the mystic, suspect to science and the modern rational world, who is most attuned this locality? The lover, perhaps. The one left behind in grief, seems likely. Persons occupying these roles are the characters of Held, and they move in and out of the novel, related through family over time and space, their absence in one chapter proving their existence in another.

For “it is absence that proves what was once present,” Michaels writes, chapter 1. Here's a mystical experience: “He felt a presence, a thermal current, a tremor across the entire surface of things, like a heat mirage. A deepening, not a darkening. He knew he’d felt it because immediately he felt something even more certain and powerful: its dousing.”

That’s how it goes with mystical experiences. Often a brief flash and then gone. Unprovable to anyone. Unmeasurable. Unbidden by extremity likely to be regarded as suspect, delusion; and indeed, we have to be aware of this possibility, of tricks played on the mind. In other circumstances, in love and grief, we have more sympathy, at least, no?

A bereaved son in chapter 6: “I walked down to the water. I felt an overwhelming presence, the place itself seemed alive with strangeness. I watched the lake take in the darkness of the sky. No stars. The sense of a presence grew almost overpowering. Then, suddenly, the place was destitute. The presence was gone, though nothing outward had changed.” The son concludes: “If my father could have chosen any way to convince me of the soul, it would have been exactly this way - not by a sensed presence, but by its sudden absence.”

Can science uncover the truth of these experiences or is there a boundary line not to be crossed in this novel that is thinking about crossed boundaries, both of the mystical and of parallels to it in the natural world? A chemist muses on periodic table element 85, astatine: “We don’t know much about it, because the instant a sample is large enough to see, it vanishes. It appears when uranium decays, its most stable isotopes exist for less than a second - just long enough to detect its existence.” Interesting, but still dealing with something scientifically measurable, however brief its presence. An analogy, at least.

Back to Paavo/Pärt:

“When we are moved, Paavo thought, when we feel something beyond us, it is the boundary, the limit of the body that allows us to recognise it. Limit is proof of the beyond. Not the self, but what lies beyond the self. He would not be surprised if physics made sense of it someday; but only because science is bent on proving it doesn’t exist. Scientists will rip us to shreds looking for it, but it will not be found where they are looking. He remembered a joke, about someone who’d lost something and was searching across the street, under a street lamp. Why are you looking for it there? Because the light is better.”

The science/faith dichotomy and relationship is an interesting topic, but now I'm perhaps suggesting it to be more of a focus of the novel than it actually is. This is not [b:Transcendent Kingdom|48570454|Transcendent Kingdom|Yaa Gyasi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1571925550l/48570454._SY75_.jpg|73528567]. It is more poetic and mystical, perhaps broaching science simply because it can be a blockage to accepting certain experiences, and one may need to find a way around. “When we grew eyes did others of our kind believe us mad for what we saw?” Michaels, chapter 11, verse 3.

“Our machines govern our behaviour, thought Hertha, but they will never teach us meaning.”

This novel is a mystical novel.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
lelandleslie | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Feb 24, 2024 |
Poetic, impressionistic, beautiful, sad.

See also: Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness

Quotes

We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever? (3)

What we give cannot be taken from us. (15)

Impossible to name the exact moment night falls, elusive as the moment sleep overtakes us. (16)

Would he know the moment of his death or would it be like night falling. (18)

...the regrets of one generation passed down as hopes for the next, the germs and spores of limitation and expectation we absorb from the social atmosphere. How a bird struggling against the wind can appear motionless. (31)

This was a new world, with new degrees of grief, many more degrees in the scale of blessedness and torment. (56)

Perhaps we are sent only exactly the kind of proof we can believe. (58)

How can we conflate invisibility with inexistence? (75)

....without any credit in the bank of belief, he had been found by them. (129)

Was rescue always a kind of love? Peter didn't know....but he did know, with certainty, that love was always a kind of rescue. (149)

"I think we remember someone by living. I think that's the way to remember." (157)

"Do we really need our own misery to teach us to be kind?" (201)

HIstory is liminal, the threshold between what we know and can't know.... (217)
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
JennyArch | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Feb 21, 2024 |
4.5⭐️

Held by Anne Michaels opens on a battlefield in France in 1917, where John, a soldier, lies injured after a blast leaves him floating in and out of consciousness. His mind wanders as he reflects upon the significant moments and people in his life. We meet John again in 1930, running a photography business in Yorkshire with memories of battle and the devastation and loss that followed haunting his every thought, even finding their way into the pictures he takes. Though married to Helen and attempting to lead a normal life – not an easy journey for a man whose physical and emotional scars serve as a constant reminder of how much he last lost. We follow John's family and those connected to them through four generations following the tragedies, relationships and challenges they face and the choices they make as they find their way in the world and how the past and memories of the people they have loved and lost leave an indelible imprint on their lives.

Written in elegant poetic prose, heartbreaking yet hopeful, blending fictional and real characters and significant moments from history spanning over a century, this novel is a memorable read. I’ll admit that it took a while to adjust to the fragmented non-linear nature of the narrative but when I began to connect the dots, I was immersed in this thought-provoking short novel that revolves around family, love, loss and fate, the invisible threads that connect people and the ties that bind the past, present and the future into a continuous saga of the human experience.

If you read this short novel with a bit of patience, allowing for moments of pause and reflection, this will prove a rewarding experience. There were parts of this novel I read multiple times and would love to read again. This was my first time reading Anne Michaels and I shall definitely explore more of her work.

Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the digital review copy via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This novel was published on January 30, 2024.

“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.”
… (lisätietoja)
½
1 ääni
Merkitty asiattomaksi
srms.reads | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Feb 5, 2024 |
Another really fine novel from Anne Michaels. Beautiful liminal qualities on the borderlines of reality and memory. Shifting through time. Enmeshing and entwining stories. Like the Mycelium that connects the roots of trees. I shall certainly be revisiting this again soon. It is one of those short novels that carries its weight lightly. Thought provoking, thoughtful, questioning, philosophical. I will find something new with every reading.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
Caroline_McElwee | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Feb 2, 2024 |

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Thomas Swann Designer
Karen White Narrator
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Eva Cruz Translator
Kaijamari Sivill (KÄÄnt.)
Janet Hansen Cover designer

Tilastot

Teokset
14
Jäseniä
4,342
Suosituimmuussija
#5,776
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 3.7
Kirja-arvosteluja
161
ISBN:t
154
Kielet
12
Kuinka monen suosikki
20

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