Held

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INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
One of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2023

A breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling author of Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault.

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—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast—as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. This resonance through time—not only of actions but also of feelings and perceptions—desire in its many forms—are at the heart of this novel’s profound investigation.

Held is a deeply affecting and intensely beautiful novel, full of unforgettable characters and imagery, wisdom and compassion. It explores the deepest mysteries, and the ways in which desire in its many forms—and perhaps the deepest desire, to find meaning—manifests itself. Held moves through history to light upon Darwin, Sir Ernest Rutherford, North Sea ganseys, early photography, Ella Mary Leather, modern field hospitals…while lovers find each other and snow drifts down across the centuries. From the WW1 battlefield where the novel begins, and its opening lines, Held is alive with seeking: “We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
One of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2023

“Held may be one of the most romantic books I’ve ever read . . . Gorgeous . . . Surprisingly expansive . . . Hauntingly beautiful . . . The whole novel is spiked with little detonations of awe . . . Michaels publishes novels so deliberately that each one entrances readers of a new decade.”
—Ron Charles, Washington Post
 
“Held is a powerful, prophetic, and poetic work . . . Readers [should] hold tight to Held, a novel for our times—one that starts with war, then moves forward and backwards and forward again with love and with hope.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
 
“‘Gorgeous,’ ‘sublime,’ ‘intensely beautiful’—this novel lives up to every word of praise contained in its glowing reviews . . . A pleasure to read, each elegant chapter is set in a distinct place and moment in time, connecting multiple generations of characters and the ghosts that walk beside them.”
—National Post
 
“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.” 
—Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
 
“Michaels offers a profound literary experience that is executed with subtlety, grace, and an exquisite intuition for the secret burning pulses of humanity that thrum beyond time . . . There is an intense, mysterious beauty that infuses Michaels’s precise prose with a compelling power that is exquisite . . . Michaels illuminates how the internal life of one person can transcend all external influence. How the interiority of an individual—their capacity for love, empathy, and desire for connection—can be an invisible force of agency that effects change in almost unfathomable ways . . . Michaels has continued to spellbind readers across the globe.”
—Irish Times
 
“Michaels is a writer who moves gracefully between award-winning poetry and captivating fiction—and there is a lyrical beauty to the novel . . . Her descriptions are full of clarity and unsettling insight . . . The gorgeous Held confirms why she believes that ‘hope is never a luxury. It is a necessity, and it is powerful.’ With Anne Michaels, you know you are in the presence of a real and rich sensibility.”
—Independent, Best Books of 2023
 
“Few authors balance the atrocities of history with the consolations of human relationships quite so effectively as Anne Michaels. She has an uncanny talent . . . Her alchemical abilities are undimmed . . . There is a truth to the humanity she depicts.”
—Financial Times

“A cleverly fragmented tale of love, memory, and time shuffles the hopes and dreams of four generations . . . She demonstrates that fugitive pieces can make up a structure as strong and as meaningful as a finished monument.”
—The Guardian

“Michaels’s writing continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction”
—The Observer
 
“Beautifully and sensitively accomplished . . . Readers should feel lucky . . . I found myself reading back over whole paragraphs just for the pleasure of it.”
—The Arts Desk
 
“Michaels’s grave, graceful third novel is a timely, resonant reminder of the trauma of war and the wreckage that it inflicts . . . Michaels has such a delicate touch as she deals with these weighty matters.”
—Daily Mail

“Exquisite . . . There is a profound richness to this novel . . . The narrative momentum never falters. Just as the characters are held by their love for others, readers are safely held in the utterly tactile and emotional embrace of this incredible novel.”
—Candace Fertile, Quill & Quire (starred review)

“A gorgeous meditation on whether the ghost in the machine is actually in our hearts . . . Michaels artfully extracts, and reweaves, the often-invisible threads connecting the lives of her characters . . . A multi-faceted and subtle discussion of what keeps animating the web of existence.” 
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Sublime . . . The joys and sorrows of passionate love and grief and the physics of memory are conveyed through the characters’ profound and lyrical musings . . . Michaels brings her poet’s finesse and soulfulness to this exquisite, deeply moving paean to love and life’s insistence and beauty.” 
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

“Luminescent. . . . [Michaels’] stunning prose sustains the book’s enchanted mood from start to finish. . . . Each page of this masterpiece has a line worth savoring.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“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.” 
—Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson’s BeetleANNE MICHAELS is a novelist and poet. Her books are translated into more than fifty languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. Among many other honours she is a Guggenheim Fellow, has received honorary degrees, and has served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted as a feature film. Her most recent books include All We Saw, Infinite Gradation, and Railtracks (co-written with John Berger). In 2020, her novel Fugitive Pieces was chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Shaped the World.CA

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