Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes histo...
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Dec 14, 2009
Shirley
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Anne Michaels is primarily a poet, and her prose shows it. I'm not sure I know where she is going in this book, but I think she is exploring the destruction of whole ways of life: the farms and villages that made room for the St. Lawrence Seaway, Nubian culture and life for the Aswan Dam, the Holocaust for??? Not sure about the last one, but there are hints.
How can you not love a book that starts with"
"Perhaps we painted on our own skin, with ochre and charcoal, long More...
How can you not love a book that starts with"
"Perhaps we painted on our own skin, with ochre and charcoal, long More...
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Aug 03, 2011
Jean und Avery begegnen sich in einem leeren Flussbett, der ideale Nährboden für ihre Liebe, deren Wurzeln sich mit jeder Erzählung aus ihrer persönlichen Geschichte und Herkunft, tiefer in die Erde eingraben. Mitten in der Wüste verlieren sie jedoch etwas unwiederbringlich. Plötzlich wortlos, verlieren sie auch sich.
10 Jahre warteten Leser auf ein weiteres Werk von Anne Michaels, deren Roman Fluchtstücke in 30 Sprachen übersetzt wurde und mit unzähligen Preisen ausgezeichnet wurde. Selten hat More...
10 Jahre warteten Leser auf ein weiteres Werk von Anne Michaels, deren Roman Fluchtstücke in 30 Sprachen übersetzt wurde und mit unzähligen Preisen ausgezeichnet wurde. Selten hat More...
Jan 08, 2012
Patricia
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This book, which was short listed for the Giller Prize, was hard to rate. I liked it but I was glad when I finished it. Sometimes I don't want a book to end, which was not the case here. The book was terribly depressing for me. Most of the characters seemed sad or at least melancholic. No one was enjoying life and this all seemed to be a result of their pasts. The plot was simple and could have been expressed in a short, short story. What made up the bulk of the book is what I will call essays
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Dec 14, 2011
Natalie
rated it: 
It was better than OK.
The crazy thing was that I was reading it for no better reason than that I picked it up from my bedside table before heading out on a trip. Then I found myself sitting in a presentation in a hotel ballroom where a tidy well dressed speaker told of how a village and its inhabitants would be displaced by a mining operation and how the technology he was demonstrating would predict the costs of relocation and burden of disease before and after for the p More...
The crazy thing was that I was reading it for no better reason than that I picked it up from my bedside table before heading out on a trip. Then I found myself sitting in a presentation in a hotel ballroom where a tidy well dressed speaker told of how a village and its inhabitants would be displaced by a mining operation and how the technology he was demonstrating would predict the costs of relocation and burden of disease before and after for the p More...
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Feb 22, 2011
Joselito
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This one is special. To demonstrate, let me IGNORE the best parts, those where I had to stop, catch my breath, close my eyes for fear that the words are already blinding me while feeling "the blow, the disaster to a soul... caused by beauty." Allow me, instead, to maybe just pick a brief scene where nothing is happening, where the author appears to be giving the reader a respite from the seemingly endless glimpses of what literature probably is beyond this world we know--
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Sep 22, 2010
Maia
rated it:
I'd give this another half star if I could but I cannot, in all honesty with myself, give it three.
This book was chosen--a little to my dismay, I admit (something about the title!)--by my more 'literary' bookclub. I read it slowly, trying to do so with an open mind. In the end, however, I was left feeling the same way I felt when i began: these novels are a perfect example of all the problems in so-called 'literary novels' and in so many novels written by authors who are first and for More...
This book was chosen--a little to my dismay, I admit (something about the title!)--by my more 'literary' bookclub. I read it slowly, trying to do so with an open mind. In the end, however, I was left feeling the same way I felt when i began: these novels are a perfect example of all the problems in so-called 'literary novels' and in so many novels written by authors who are first and for More...
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Apr 04, 2010
Elaine
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I chose this book for my Canadian novel project in English. My main focus was to look for themes which focused on or related to the Canadian way of life. In terms of theme, this novel excelled in making readers think of loss, change, living in memories, the meaning of love, and grief. The writing style, as I see many people agree, is simply stunning in its intense poetic rhythm. Certain passages make one think of the deeper meaning behind words: my personal favourite on page 22, "How much o
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Jan 29, 2010
Andrew
rated it: 
This is a detailed review because my wife asked me to read it and comment on it, since she was due to read it and discuss it at her book club. I must emphasize that this is a very personal perspective. I have not read Fugitive Pieces.
Hardback Edition. Bloomsbury 2009.
Prologue. A very poetic introduction - but essentially meaningless. Well - wait a minute - it may not be meaningless, but when a poet writes, it can be very difficult to get inside the mind of the poet. More...
Hardback Edition. Bloomsbury 2009.
Prologue. A very poetic introduction - but essentially meaningless. Well - wait a minute - it may not be meaningless, but when a poet writes, it can be very difficult to get inside the mind of the poet. More...
Dec 21, 2009
Geetha
rated it:
The theme of “The Winter Vault” is very interesting, not one I had thought about in spite of driving along the St. Lawrence Seaway at least once every year. The novel chronicles two great 20th century engineering projects - the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada. Both projects involve the destruction of the homeland of thousands of people, the Nubians in Egypt and several Canadians, as well as the relocation of the Abu Simbel Temple in Egypt
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Dec 20, 2009
Mag
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This novel is about displacing people, art and culture. It’s about loss, its intensity and its irreparable damage. It takes us first to Egypt at the time of building of the Aswam dam, which not only displaced thousands of Nubians, but also Abu Simbel temple, and then to Canada and Poland. In Canada, widening of the St. Lawrence River caused some villages to be re-located tens of kilometers from where they originally were, causing grief to the people residing there, and in Poland it’s the Second
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May 13, 2011
Ruth
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I'm not a big fan of Anne Michaels and I have to say the Quill and Quire review sums up my feelings about this one: http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/rev... Still, I liked it a lot better than Fugitive Pieces, and there were some highly quotable gems amongst the prose, which does seem a little less 'hothouse exotic' than in her previous novel. Still, Michaels' fiction suffers from a refusal to embrace realism stylistically even when she tackles themes - love, loss, displacement - that could b
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Feb 26, 2011
switterbug (Betsey)
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The first page of this book (something between an epigraph and a prologue) informs the narrative thrust of the story and glues the abstract elements into a philosophical cohesiveness. This novel, while still a loosely constructed story with main characters and a forward progression, is primarily a meditation on the eternal forces of the human condition entwined with the timeless elements of the earth. The poetic narrative is like an instrument hovering above the earth's atmosphere and producing
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Nov 21, 2010
Shane
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I was cautioned by those who had attempted to read this book that they had found it like “work.” Some had even given up in the attempt. And it was work in the opening chapters, when I was treated to excessive descriptions on engineering and botany, and given the exact number of villages, houses, people, goats, camels, ducks, geese and other assorted denizens who were moved during the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt in 1964. And this excessive “dumping” of research data repeated whether in des
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Mar 06, 2011
Tricia
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A profound and haunting meditation on love and sorrow, mistakes and lies, forgiveness and grace -- what some might loftily term "the human condition." Michaels is a gifted poet as well as a novelist, and while her poetic sensibility is most evident in the beauty of her language and the stunning preciseness of detail with which she evokes physical and emotional atmosphere, it is also manifested in the elliptical, fluid flow of the novel's action, which alternates freely between the lar
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Jun 01, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
rated it:
Anne Michaels has published several acclaimed poetry collections, including The Weight of Oranges and Miner's Pond. Her background as a poet shines through in The Winter Vault, which awed critics with its many elegant, vibrant, and luminous passages and Michaels's endless curiosity about science, engineering, and architecture. Unfortunately, many of these same critics were conflicted in their overall reviews: they reluctantly felt hampered by rolling monologues, pedantic segments, uninspiring ch
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Jul 14, 2009
Anne
rated it:
I took my time reading this novel because it was so rich with zen koan-like phrases that made me stop and contemplate. Even with all the start and stop, I still felt connected to the main characters and the forward motion of their story. I was fascinated by the book's interwoven stories of displacement (whole towns that were displaced when the St. Lawrence Seaway was built in Canada, thousand of Nubian villagers who lost their homes and civilization when the Aswan Dam flooded the Nile to form La
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Aug 07, 2011
The Winter Vault (2009) by Canadian writer Anne Michaels is a haunting and beautiful novel about the painful displacement of people and communities through war and major public projects. It is also about personal loss and grieving. The central characters, Jean and Avery, bear witness to the heartbreaking displacement of communities, cemetaries and the Nubian people in Egypt and Sudan as a resuly of the building of the Aswan Dam. Similarly, Jean,s earliest memories and Jean and Avery's later memo
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Dec 31, 2010
Kirsty
rated it:
I was really looking forward to this book as Fugitive Pieces is one of my all time favourite books. And I was disappointed that I had to force myself to read the last part of it and can't gibe it a rating of more than 3.
The writing is amazing, the ideas (especially about dislocation and place) are really interesting and I love learning some new history (to me) through a novel but I would have preferred a different second half of the book. I am not sure that adding in the 'Warwaw duri More...
The writing is amazing, the ideas (especially about dislocation and place) are really interesting and I love learning some new history (to me) through a novel but I would have preferred a different second half of the book. I am not sure that adding in the 'Warwaw duri More...
Dec 03, 2010
Dot
rated it:
I had some difficulty getting into this book. I think I might have done better had I read it in print rather than listening to it on CD. Eventually I got into the rhythm of the author's lyrical prose style and began to engage with it more successfully. Also, in the beginning part of the book, I found the author's habit of making lengthy lists eg of Civil Engineering machines or botanical specimens to be pedantic rather than poetic, but later on I came to hear the poetry in the lists ...in fac
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May 13, 2010
Mary
rated it: 
Poignant poetic language throughout. "Sunlight passed through walls of dust where real walls had stood only a few hours before; the city, an afterimage.When the dust settled, this glowing fliesh dissolved, leaving only the skeletons of the buildings......" "if rain had a voice, it would be that voice." "...and the scream of light tore across bedroom walls." Lucjan's maps: sugar map, a chocolate map, a ginkgo tree map, a wieeping willow map....of invisible things
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Oct 25, 2009
Doreen
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Fugitive Pieces is also on my all time favourites list and I had wondered what had happened to Anne Michaels. I found it hard to believe she would be a one hit wonder. Her style of poetic writing is usually something that I look for in a book. Although I feel I am in the minority, given the success of this novel. and it's recent nomination for the Giller I was not taken with the writing here. I felt that there were moments of brillance that took my breath away and then other points that she bela
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Feb 05, 2010
Jen
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I really, really wanted to love this book. The writing is so beautiful - poetic and beautifully descriptive. I really enjoyed the first part of the book, with the descriptions of Africa and the building of the dam and relocation of the Nubian towns.This is at least the third book I've read in the past few months that described historical events I didn't even know about (the others being the German occupation of British islands during the second world war, described in The Guernsey Literary and P
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Aug 23, 2009
Marlene
rated it:
Well, I did finish, but can't say I loved this. The author is clearly a master with words, with a poetic approach to emotions, etc., but the frequent references to things mechanical and technological create too harsh a contrast, and the two themes do not come together for me. I think she tried to put too much into a basically slim volume. We have the past lives of three characters, past lives which do not ever really come together. The theme of destruction of cities is repeated, but gets tedious
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Aug 09, 2009
Alice
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I really liked Michaels' Fugitive Pieces, so I was excited to see her second novel. This is a story about love, but also about loss -- personal loss, but also collective loss on a scale that is difficult for us, who have never experienced it, to imagine. With a poet's intense imagery, Michaels take us with Jean Shaw and her engineer husband to Nubia as it is about to be inundated by the newly formed Lake Nasser. This experience reminds Jean of the villages that were likewise flooded by the const
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Mar 31, 2010
Jeanette
rated it:
I loved "Fugitive Pieces" and I really enjoyed reading "The Winter Vault." The themes of change and loss seem to dominate the novel. These themes are developed as the Aswan Dam on the Nile is being built and Avery Escher oversees the removal and reassembly of the Abu Simbel temple to higher ground to save it from being flooded. Also, the memories Avery and Jean share of the damning of the St. Lawrence river to provide hydro electric power echo these themes.
These More...
These More...
Nov 17, 2010
Bettie
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jun 08, 2010
Heather
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This is my ward's June book club book. I'll read it if I can find a copy.
***
Found a copy!
***
It took a while to get into this book. It's very detailed (written by a poet) and that dragged me down for the first 50 pages or so, but once I got into it, the details were nice. I probably should re-read the beginning with more appreciation of that.
The major theme of the book was rebuilding after loss. The story mentions 3 major historical events: rebuilding Nubia aft More...
***
Found a copy!
***
It took a while to get into this book. It's very detailed (written by a poet) and that dragged me down for the first 50 pages or so, but once I got into it, the details were nice. I probably should re-read the beginning with more appreciation of that.
The major theme of the book was rebuilding after loss. The story mentions 3 major historical events: rebuilding Nubia aft More...
Apr 17, 2010
Brian
rated it:
I read it fast. Sometimes I felt guilty, thinking oh all this poetic stuff might actually mean something, these lists might be more than a background drumbeat. It's possible. As a story, it didn't fly for me. There was little to like about any of the characters, and yet the plot seems to want me to care who winds up with whom or if they all shoot themselves in despair. If you like lists, you might love it. If you like speeches about the meaning of life that go on for section after section,
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Aug 15, 2009
Robyn
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There is very little story to this novel. Two decent, smart and unremarkable people are in love and then find it difficult to love one another following the death of their child. The details of this story are given much less attention than you might expect; instead, long passages consider the wife's interest in botany or the husband's involvement in public works projects. I wondered why this is so and the answer I came up with is that this is kind of the way life is: Thinking about what you do o
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May 30, 2009
Capitu
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For years I had been waiting for Anne Michaels to write this book. I loved her first novel, Fugitive Pieces, and wanted to read more of her work. Or, more precisely, wanted her to write more “Fugitive Pieces”. In a twisted way, I got exactly what I wanted... and I feel disappointed about it!
All the elements of her first work are present in The Winter Vault: the poetic and intricate writing; the historical and geological research; characters that dwell in a philosophical cosmos b More...
All the elements of her first work are present in The Winter Vault: the poetic and intricate writing; the historical and geological research; characters that dwell in a philosophical cosmos b More...
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