Held - by Anne Michaels (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A breathtaking, ineffable new novel from the author of the international best sellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault--a story of love and loyalty across generations, at once sweeping and intimate

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.

Review Quotes

Winner of the Prix Transfuge

Shortlisted for the Prix Femina Étranger

"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 X

"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." --Washington Post

"Michaels's narrative glides gracefully back and forth in time . . . Each brief chapter is filled with deftly sketched characters . . . Throughout, these stories spark both poignant connections and provocative divergences." --New York Times Book Review

"A radiant novel . . . The poetic resonance of Michaels's writing is acute. Her imagery shimmers with metaphoric significance." --Wall Street Journal

"Dazzling . . . Held breaks new ground . . . It's clear that Michaels's writing continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction." --The Observer

"This episodic, philosophical novel orbits a group of loosely connected characters living between 1917 and 2025 . . . Throughout, characters ponder the boundaries between the physical and the ineffable, the mortal and the spiritual." --The New Yorker

"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 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

"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 Beetle

"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

"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

"Held is a novel that floats, a beguiling association of memories, projections, and haunted instances through which the very notion of our mortality, of our resilience and desires, is interrogated in passages as impactful as they can be hypnotic. . . . Michaels's mastery of word and situations is understated but insistent, [which] embeds the reader in the resoundingly mysterious and ephemeral. Here is a novel in which we are willingly held."

"It's rare that I read a book in one day, but Held's writing grabbed me and held on. . . . Michaels is fearless. . . . I am sure this is a master work, a pool I'll wish to slip into again. I loved this book." --Neva Gronert, Denver Post

"Breathtaking, sad, sublime and haunting. . . . Written in such beautifully poetic and luminous prose, I had to stop to underline sentences." --Cathy Hayward, Good Housekeeping (U.K.)

"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

"A poignant, singular work that ruminates on the ways in which we touch one another's lives . . . Anne Michaels tells this story in accomplished prose that engages the reader effortlessly; it's difficult not to inhale this strange, lovely novel in a single sitting . . . [A] thematically rich work, the compassion and tenderness it has for its characters and their complicated relationships feels like its most profound gift." --BookBrowse

"'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

"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." --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." --Booklist (starred review)

"Luminescent . . . Her 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)

About the Author

Anne Michaels's books have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. She has been short-listed for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and twice long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted into a feature film. From 2015 to 2019, she was Toronto's poet laureate. She lives in Canada.