Anne Michaels

A breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling author of Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault. 1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, 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—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast—as the snow falls. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. This resonance through time—not only of actions but also of feelings and perceptions—desire in its many forms—are at the heart of this novel’s profound investigation. Held is a deeply affecting and intensely beautiful novel, full of unforgettable characters and imagery, wisdom and compassion. It explores the deepest mysteries, and the ways in which desire in its many forms—and perhaps the deepest desire, to find meaning—manifests itself. Held moves through history to light upon Darwin, Sir Ernest Rutherford, North Sea ganseys, early photography, Ella Mary Leather, modern field hospitals…while lovers find each other and snow drifts down across the centuries. From the WW1 battlefield where the novel begins, and its opening lines, Held is alive with seeking: "We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”

A Novel

Held

sina (she/her) 

'Sometimes I think I see her too‘, Peter said, 'out of the corner of my eye. If you can see a feeling.‘ ‚Yes, I think you can.‘

clara

He would understand, later, that there is a moment when your life must become your own; you must claim it from all the other stories you've been given, that have been handed down or thrust upon you, or that you've been left holding while someone else claimed theirs. He already knew that the life unchosen, left behind because of cowardice or shame, does not wither. But instead, without exception, grows rampant, choking the path ahead.

She knew what he would want for her: that stillness might grow to peace. Not still: held.

It must have been unbearable to be pressed against the air, hearing me shouting for you, not being able to answer. Neither of us fluent then in the language of the dead. But now, my ears and eyes never miss a sign you send me: a flicker of light between the trees, a twitch of wind across my face, a bird sitting for long minutes on a branch beside me, unafraid. I hadn't understood before, how being unafraid makes room for love.

one could make a long exposure say, thirty years of married life, or family life in a kitchen, infants growing to adults-and all that the photographic plate would show was an empty room. But it would not be empty, instead it would be full of life, invisible and real.

Held quotes

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