Yes, it’s a Holocaust novel, which follows the life of a young Polish boy, Jakob Beer, who survives after his parents are murdered by Nazi soldiers and his sister is abducted. The book works on a huge canvas; geographically from Poland to Greece to Canada, historically from Iron Age settlements to the Berlin Wall, intellectually from the concerns of translation to the propensity of language to contain experience to techniques for forecasting the weather. It explores geology, archaeology, science, poetry, music and the joy of learning.
Written in two parts, from the stance of two men whose lives have been enduringly changed by war, it’s a challenging read. Anne Michaels is almost painfully careful about the gravity, the meaning of every word she uses, demanding that the reader takes equal care, almost mulls over each word, enjoys each drop of significance.
It’s a novel which asks the big questions. How do we survive the unspeakable? What is it possible to regain? What should we close up forever? How do we find happiness after such colossal grief? What is the significance of recording history?
It’s also a novel which sends you burrowing down so many personal rabbit holes. Would I preserve a record of my experience in the face of death? Could I make a good life if I had lost so much?
This brilliant, beautiful and heartbreaking book, Fugitive Pieces, won several important prizes, including the Orange Prize and the Guardian Fiction prize in 1997. Reading it was a big upside to being bowled over by the flu. I wonder what I’d make of it with the cerebellum firing on all cylinders. It will certainly stand a second reading.
