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Summary and Reviews of Held by Anne Michaels

Held by Anne Michaels

Held

A Novel

by Anne Michaels
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (11):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 30, 2024, 240 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2025, 240 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

A breathtaking and ineffable new novel from the author of the international best sellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault—a novel 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.

IV
RIVERORWELL,
SUFFOLK, 1984

At the back of the shop, Peter sat at a large table, the Anglepoise leaning over him, as if searching for errors in his work. He heard the front door open, with its bell on a hinge, and a voice call out: "On Amsterdam Island, it's 4:01 p.m.; in Perth, it's 11:01 p.m.; in Alert, it's 10:01 a.m.!" He looked up. Thank God. She was home.

* * *

He held her. She was long, like a pine marten, a single pure muscle.

All in one piece. Thank God.

* * *

Peter closed the shop. They went upstairs. He did not want her to know how much he'd missed her. Whenever Mara was away—saturated, silted with fear for her. Unbearable. "I missed you," Mara said. "Miss me?" His tears seeping out.

She held him, squeezed the life into him. "Dad," she said. "Dad. Don't worry, I'm staying."

He wept like a child.

* * *

She brought out the griddle.

They ate pancakes for supper because it was a tradition between them when she came home and because she liked the glass bottle of maple syrup with ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. Anne Michaels' background as a poet is a clear influence on Held, the language of which is spare, challenging and full of vivid imagery. The Booker judges said that 'few books can achieve a pitch of poetic intensity sustained across a whole novel'. How did Held's 'poetic intensity' affect your reading of the novel? Did it heighten the book's emotional impact?
  2. Held is structured unconventionally as a series of fragments, moving forwards and backwards in time, rather than as a traditional linear novel. Why do you think Michaels structured the book in this way? Could its fragmentary nature be seen as a more accurate representation of the way we experience and remember our lives than novels that follow a more conventional path?
  3. In an interview ...
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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Anne Michaels, once Toronto's poet laureate, employs a nontraditional narrative structure and 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. At a slim 200 pages, Held appears to be an ambitious project with its numerous locations and large cast of characters, but Michaels rises to the challenge she has set herself—everything is deliberate and nothing is underdeveloped. Though each reader is bound to take away something different from this thematically rich work, the compassion and tenderness this novel has for its characters and their complicated relationships feels like this novel's most profound gift...continued

Full Review Members Only (519 words)

(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).

Media Reviews

Ron Charles, Washington Post
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.

Daily Mail
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.

Financial Times
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.

Independent, Best Books of 2023
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.

Irish Times
Michaels offers 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 illuminates how the internal life of one person can transcend all external influence. How the interiority of an individual—their capacity for love, empathy, and desire for connection—can be an invisible force of agency that effects change in almost unfathomable ways ... Michaels has continued to spellbind readers across the globe.

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

Booklist (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.

Kirkus Reviews (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.

Publishers Weekly (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.

Author Blurb Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
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.

Author Blurb Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle
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.

Reader Reviews

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Beyond the Book



Hertha Ayrton

Hertha Ayrton The friendship between Hertha Ayrton and Marie Curie is explored in Anne Michaels's multigenerational novel Held. Although Marie Curie is a household name, Aryton's fascinating life is likely unfamiliar to most readers.

Born in 1854 in Portsea, England, Hertha Ayrton was born as Phoebe Sarah Marks. Levi Marks, a clockmaker from Poland, had been forced to flee to England to escape anti-Semitic persecution. When he died in 1861, leaving his family in a significant amount of debt, his wife, seamstress Alice Theresa Marks, did her best to raise Phoebe Sarah, who at the time went by Sarah, and her six siblings (soon to be seven), but struggled under the pressure. At nine years old, Sarah went to live with Marion Hartog, her mother&#...

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

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