I find Anne Michael's books to be infuriating as a reader for while the writing and prose are always beautiful I just never quite feel like I understand what it is happening in the books - and this was no exception.

Anne Michaels's "Held" is a beautiful rumination on love, grief, and how we connect to the world around us. How does a flower or the smell of a season bring us back to moments of love and loss? When someone dies, what happens to their memories and our memories of them? How is our present dictated by simple decisions our ancestors/parents made? What happens to our stories when war and nature change the landscapes of our existence?

In the novel, Michael weaves an interconnected group of stories to answer these questions. The book is more a meditation on the above questions than a straightforward narrative, but I found the book so beautiful, romantic, and toughing. Michaels shows empathy for her characters in the way she allows them the gift of silence and reflection. As they seek connections to each other and the natural world, readers have to piece together how each story fits in with the others.

Note: If you're not on a kindle, I would keep a notecard of the characters' names because this will help you make connections between the characters that are not always stated (children of previous characters for ex.) when Michaels switches from one story to the next.

Unfortunately I could not finish this book. The formatting made it very difficult to read as a digital ARC and the storyline felt very haphazard. The first section of the book was engaging about a soldier returning to life after WWI, but I struggled to see how the stories interconnected with the other characters. It might have been a case of wrong book wrong time for me and I am sure that in a paper version it might be easy to read.

I find it hard to review this book. One minute I loved it ,the next I was confused and at times I was bored. I think the main problem is that I just didn’t really understand it. I could sees the links and themes of love and what that means but beyond that I was lost. I am giving this 3 stars because I felt the writing was beautiful

I received an advanced reading copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, and the author Anne Michaels.
Beautifully written, but a little slow at times and hard to follow. Very lyrical and poetic, haunting and a poignant but slightly let down by the meandering course and random plot lines. Knowing the author is a primarily a poet will help you get more of a feel for this story. 3 stars.

“Mist smouldered like cremation fires in the rain.”
This is the poetry of a photographer, minutely observed idiosyncrasies and mannerisms, tesselated into a rich tapestry: “That what was created by light was revealed by darkness.”
“when sofia opened the door, the light spilled into the dark garden, and when she closed the door behind her, the darkness rushed in to heal the wound the light had made.“
Positive: a giant Hokusai wave of poetry, not crushing but cradling you.
Negative: a hotchpotch of random plotlines and a plethora of charcters with no obvious tie-in.

A book both epic in scope and yet seeping with minutiae of detail.

There is a moving time frame through the twentieth century beginning after The Great War that I originally thought was leaping back and forth through generations of a family. It both was and wasn't and I felt challenged that I was misplacing characters. However, once I began to wallow, I suspected that the splinters of life we saw were personal cameos of a rolling history some connected, and some didn't. Backdrops include a history of photography, Marie Curie, the fight for women's suffrage, Darwin's theories, Art, sickness and health, eyewitness to war....

The language festers within the story and caused me to stop and examine the use of words so many times eg "plangent". As I neared the end of the book, a paragraph stood out as an indicator (to me) of its genesis.

"Sometimes history is simply detritus: midden mounds, ghost nets ... a continual convergence of stories unfolding too quickly or too gradually... History is liminal"

What a delight this was. Despite a constant nag that I lacked the intelligence to understand the book, by the end I felt clever enough to form an opinion!

With many thanks to NetGalley & Bloomsbury Publishing for allowing me to read and review

Anne Michaels is an amazing writer who takes on the huge themes of life and loss.
Held felt to me like a series of beautiful vignettes: lives across the centuries, skipping back and forth in time and across Europe.
To enjoy it, I think you have to let go of needing a linear narrative and sort of let it wash over you. I didn’t find that the easiest but the reward is the lyricism of Michaels’ writing which is so evocative.
I’m not sure I could relay the stories or the links between them but I still have a palpable sense of the huge emotion running through the novel.
Recommended if you love poetic writing, huge ideas and ambition, and are happy to live with a non-linear and fragmented narrative!

This is poetry in novel form with its emphasis on language - beautiful language - and musicality in its structure. The repeating images stay with you, perhaps more than anything else - the stars like salt across the night sky, the falling snow. The novel encompasses the whole of life and the whole of the history of the world asking questions about love and war, death and the afterlife. I loved it, though there were moments where I felt I lost the thread and would have liked it to be a little easier to follow. Perhaps my only niggle - and this reflects a personal cynicism - is the highly romanticised image of love, love between men and women and parental love.

Since reading 'Fugitive Pieces' I have known the beauty Anne Michaels holds in her poetic prose, but there is also always the worry that whatever comes next will not live up to expectations. In this, Michaels dismantles expectations by doing something different. While 'Fugitive Pieces' was a narrative seamlessly linked and retold, 'Held' is a stunning yet fragmentary narrative depicting glimpses into the lives of Europeans from the early 1900s to the future year of 2025.

'Held' repeatedly calls into question what it means to be held - physically and metaphorically - by others, by ourselves, and in time and memory. This book is so subtly about legacy it is genius because it feels as if Michaels carries you through these lives; cradles you in their love, their grief and trauma, their wants and desires, and their hopes (no matter how fragile). Michaels' writing is a soft place to land with a mother's touch and ability to still tell you the truth, even when it is painful.

I appreciate some may struggle with the structure of 'Held' as it passes between characters, dedicates varying time and attention to said characters (with some appearing only for a chapter), and the prose is delivered in bursts of poetic prose. But the fragmentary approach, in my opinion, is a newer version of the epistolary style, and it is one of the best ways to view humanity. Not from a birds-eye, omniscient narrator perspective, but from being a witness, in the room, in the field, in the street with them. Thus, 'Held' is worth the time it requires to read, savour and cherish.

Anne Michaels' Held was beautiful writing. This is one of the few books in which even though I did not get or understand much of the plot, story or characters, I just wanted to go on to the next paragraph and the page for the lovely words.

If the reader treats each chapter or story as an isolated piece, they will find that they are beautiful as a stand-alone piece.
Amongst the lovely words there is a surprising amount of philosophising.
Anne Michaels is one of the world's great modern poets, so this is no surprise.
It may come as as a surprise to the reader that there is more structure than that to this collection of 'stories'.
I have not yet found all of this structure, and have decided that it may detract from the beauty of the whole if I was to look for it. It will come naturally on re-reading this novel as I no doubt will.
The strong ideas in the novel are romance, nature, love, beauty and the search for meaning or truth.
An enchanting novel, with paragraphs that I read again as soon as I had finished reading them because of the beauty of the idea or the wording.
All in all a touching novel, one that I have no hesitance to recommend to all readers that have a soul to be touched, as mine was.
Thank you to the author for a wonderful piece of work, and thanks to the publisher for and advance reading copy for honest review.

This was a beautifully written novel, one of those books where you will need to re-read sentences to fully understand the beauty of the prose

Beautifully written, although confusing at times, whilst I did enjoy the book I can’t say that I ever fully understood it.

A beautifully written book, my reading slowed because I kept going back to re-read sentences. On the face of it, this is a tale like many other novels, taking a family through the twentieth century and ending in the near future. But it is so much more. It addresses ideas about photography, science and art, the supernatural, love, loss and loneliness - a huge sweep contained in a short book.

The structure is fragmented and overlapping: it's like trying to order a box of jumbled family photographs, making some connections, constructing the start of a timeline but then finding some that are very beautiful but don't fit the narrative you thought you were finding. But every sentence matters and the whole bears rereading. An unusual read but very rewarding.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Ultimately I found this book to be really beautiful, and it sits with you in a way most books don't. Initially I did find it a bit challenging, as at times it can feel like the chapters are made of disjointed pieces and it's not clear how they fit together, but the prose itself is so well done and as the story takes shape it becomes clear how intentional this is. We follow four generations of a family from WW1 to just past the present day, and getting the small snapshots we are provided means the reader in some ways pieces things together the way someone recalling an old memory might. Very emotionally evocative with characters you feel you really get to know as their stories unfold mostly through their relationships with others rather than through a discrete event-driven narrative.

This book opens with John in 1917. He is on a battlefield in northern France, dazed and confused. His thoughts wander. In the next chapter it is 1920 and John has returned to North Yorkshire and his wife Helena. He reopens his photography business and maybe this is a clue to this book. We get snapshots of life. The book moves in time between earlier than the First World War and slightly past the present day. There are links between the snapshots and scenes we see though some are easier to find than others.

This is a strange book to read. Indeed I'm not sure I've read anything quite like this before. The fact that in some ways there is no "story" but a series of scenes from lives lived is maybe unusual. The writing - which is wonderful - is very poetic and is "stream of consciousness" at times. I would call it disjointed but not offensively so for me. In practice I'm finding it hard to review this book in a way that does it justice. Our journeys as readers of this book will be different.

I have to confess that parts of this book left me rather puzzled. However parts of it I loved. There is a scene where Helena, who has already been described as an artist, is a model for another painter. Then she paints again. This scene moved me in ways I find hard to describe. Peter gives a cap to (I'm fairly sure) his daughter's boyfriend - again that felt powerful and intense.

For me this is a book to be patient with and allow to happen to you. Experience this and let the flow take you
"Someday Anna would come to understand that everything she had thought of as loss was something found"
In here is love and loss, pain and beauty and maybe just life generally.

Overall I have no doubt that this will be one of the best books I read this year. I found it very interesting as well as powerfully moving. I guess I have to say that at times I did find it frustrating - what did happen to Helena for example. If you allow Held space and time it may well bring you good things. Held is a very special book. 4.5/5

"Who can say what happens when we are remembered"

What a truly beautifully written books. The descriptive prose is so polished and poetic the talent of this poet shines through every word.
The story itself begins with a badly wounded soilder having visions and follows his family through the ages. The descriptive naure means you need to concentrate hard ti kerp the story in the right order. Its deal with a lot of f tough subjects in a very poetic positive way.
Thank you such much net gallery and publisher for this beautiful 5 star arc

This is a highly unusual book it almost felt like reading a fevered half remembered dream. It all felt rather strange adn disconcerting. The story starts in a hospital where a Great War soldier is recovering from his wounds and having visions or seeing shadows and then follows him and his wife and their family throughout the decades. The prose is very poetic and requires concentration and some work from the reader to decipher and keep the story coherent in their head. If you are up for a reading challenge then you will enjoy Held.

Anne Michaels certainly doesn't churn out books by the cart load. This is only her second novel since the magnificent Fugitive Pieces in 1997
It is small wonder that there is such a gap between her books, as each is so beautifully crafted, with such thought given as to how the prose fits together.
"Held"is aptly named, as peopling the stories are those who hold and are held.
Within the chapters, characters hold on to their lovers, whether dead or alive, or even, simply absent, they hold on to memories and even hold on to their very lives as they lie injured on a battlefield.
Others, in turn are held; as they unravel after they return from war, as they die, and even as ghostly images in early photographs.
There are threads of connection running through the chapters, but nothing is linear or chronological. This is not a work that takes the reader from A to B but rather a sinuous , poetic piece of prose offering up so many different musings and ideas that I feel I have to read the book at least once more in order to try to unpack everything that is in each story chapter.
Michaels writing is unlike any other novelist that I have read before and her style is both intriguing and challenging. No beach holiday read this one, but a book to reflect on and to savour.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an e arc copy of this novel, in return for an honest review.