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Published Apr 2009
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives.
In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for the dismantling and reconstruction of the temple as it’s rescued from the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. He is a “machine-worshipper,” yet exquisitely sensitive to the dichotomy of creation and destruction of which machines are capable. Jean is a botanist by avocation and passion, interested in everything that grows. They had met on the banks of the St. Lawrence River and watched together as the construction of the seaway changed the course of the river and swallowed towns, homes, lives. Now, at the edge of another world about to be lost forever, Avery and Jean create their own world, exchanging the “moments that are the mortar of our days, innocent memories we don’t know we hold until given the gift of the eagerness of another.”
But that gift will not be enough to bind them when tragedy strikes, and they will go back to separate lives in Toronto. Avery returns to school to study architecture, and Jean enters the life of Lucjan, a Polish émigré artist. Lucjan’s haunting stories of occupied Warsaw draw Jean further and further away from Avery. But, in time, he will also offer her the chance for forgiveness, consolation, and, finally, her own, most essential life.
Stunning in its explorations of both the physical and emotional worlds of its characters, intensely moving and lyrical, The Winter Vault is a radiant work of fiction.
"Because Michaels is such an unrelenting artist – she bejewels every square inch – The Winter Vault ends up giving us everything but space. No memory or death or tragedy or whisper of the past is allowed to pass without poetic handling, so readers are left with few mysteries or personal interpretations or stray shadings to fill in for themselves. Some people will love all that writerly fulsomeness; others might admire the writer’s vision, but long for more room to breathe." - Quill & Quire.
"Starred Review. A tender love story set against an intriguing bit of history is handled with uncommon skill." - Publishers Weekly.
"Readers passionate about history, philosophy and the power of words to bend meaning will swoon for Michaels' rarefied if oddly impersonal fiction." - Kirkus Reviews.
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Photo: © Marzena Pogorzaly
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, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice short-listed 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.
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