I loved Fugitive Pieces. It was a book where each word seemed to count. Held is the same, though I found the format more challenging

Held starts with a soldier injured in WW1 unsure whether he will die or survive. Written in short, somewhat unconnected paragraphs, the book follows John’s memories and then his family - finally ending in 2025.

This is part poverty part book both very good.

Thanks to Netgallery for the ARC..

Dazzling tour de force meditating on love and loss by telling stories of "those left behind" after war and tragedy. We meet across 100 years artists, photographers, journalists, a hat maker and many more loosely linked across generations. The language is so beautiful, as befits an author who is a published poet. I have read it once but I can't wait to read it again to savour the words and marvel at the ideas.
Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy.

I loved Fugitive Pieces and I have a particular fondness for Michaels' poetry. Held is a novel which seems to straddle both poetry and prose. It begins with John, a soldier in the First World War, injured in battle, he lies waiting either to die or be saved, unable to move his legs. As he awaits his fate he can hear the nearby river and it unspools his memories of what he holds dear, how he got here and what he loves and may lose. He returns from the war a literal broken man. Attempting to piece his life back together he finds himself haunted by ghosts he cannot understand.

From here we move forward and backwards in time through John's family, leaping across timelines and themes, all connected by motifs that recur throughout, rivers and water, the snow, and women, the women who hold life, hold fast, who keep the home fires burning, who remain while the men come and go.

This book rewards patient reading. It's something I feel I need to read again and again but that would be no chore to do.

I am probably very unworthy to read a book like this because I struggle with poetry and this book has very poetic prose. It is beautiful and lyrical and you feel there should be soft music playing as you read - Gorecki comes to mind.

The chapters are all part of love stories as generations of a family fall in love and struggle through the adversities of whichever decade they are in.

As I said, the prose at times is so beautiful that I found it hard to move on. There is care given to each sentence. I am not a lover of poetry in general but I would definitely read the other books written by Anne Michaels. They are the sort of gifts I would like to give to the closest of friends.

Thankyou to Netgalley for the ARC.

Held is Canadian poet Anne Michaels’ third novel in almost three decades, an indication of the care and thought with which she approaches her craft. This sublimely beautiful book opens with a wounded man, slipping in and out of consciousness on a battlefield in France in 1917 and ends, over a century later, in the Gulf of Finland where a spark of attraction is both made and remembered.

Michaels’ novel is made up of a series of gorgeously poetic snapshots unfolding the family history which begins with John and Helena. Her narrative explores themes of war, love, loss, memory and connection, posing profound questions about the human state, all expressed in arrestingly beautiful prose. It’s an extraordinary piece of fiction, and a hugely affecting one, at times suffused with an awful, aching yearning for what is lost. It demands a great deal of thought and concentration from its readers but more than repays them. Impossible to do justice to a novel like this in just a few words but I urge you to read it. I’ve lost the habit of rereading but with this novel, one reading is not nearly enough.

This novel has left me feeling very conflicted ,I very much enjoyed her previous work Fugitive Pieces and was delighted to see this novel on Netgalley uk , it jumped to the top of my to be read pile because of my love of the previous book
There are elements of the novel that I loved , I find the authors writing beautiful and poetic and enjoyed the process of reading individual sections immensely . What i struggled with however was finding the links between the multiple narrators . Initially. the story intrigued me , what was the significance for example of the ghost like images appearing on the photographs then by an early character ? I was left feeling that I probably missed lots of the links in the story as a whole . I could settle to enjoy one story when the subject changed as did the time with the story flashing back and forward through time , Each individual section worked as short stories in themselves but I felt lost frequently leaving me with the feeling that I had missed something important .I felt lost and confused and consequently felt I had not enjoyed the novel as a whole as much as I had wanted .it left me as a reader feeling rather stupid
I rarely reread novels but feel that this may be a book I need to put down after first reading and come to it fresh at another time
I will be watching the reviews with interest to see if I turn out to be an outlier as a reader with my opinions

The Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels has only written two novels before this - 1996's Fugitive Pieces and 2009's The Winter Vault. If you read either of those magnificent works, or her poetry, you know what you are in for here: startling, crystal prose. Imagery of such clarity, insight and beauty that it breaks you.

Held tells a story which spans four generations, but at its heart is John, a veteran of the First World War, a broken man, who returns home to Helena, an artist. As they struggle to rebuild their lives in a changing world, their love remains, pushing them forward, and as the years and decades reel by, the stories shift, the characters change, but there are connections, sinews of memory which transverse time. There is transcendence here. There is beauty. This is feels like a pulsing, living work, fragile, clear as a crystal, about to break. At times it caused me to draw sharp breath. I loved it.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.