Fugitive Pieces
Author: Anne Michaels
Publisher: Bloomsbury / Vintage
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Cover Description
In 1940 a boy bursts from the mud of a war-torn Polish city, where he has buried himself to hide from the soldiers who murdered his family. His name is Jakob Beer. He is only seven years old. And although by all rights he should have shared the fate of the other Jews in his village, he has not only survived but been rescued by a Greek geologist, who does not recognize the boy as human until he begins to cry. With this electrifying image, Anne Michaels ushers us into her rapturously acclaimed novel of loss, memory, history, and redemption.
As Michaels follows Jakob across two continents, she lets us witness his transformation from a half-wild casualty of the Holocaust to an artist who extracts meaning from its abyss. Filled with mysterious symmetries and rendered in heart-stopping prose, Fugitive Pieces is a triumphant work, a book that should not so much be read as it should be surrendered to.
TL;DR Review
Fugitive Pieces is a gorgeously written story about the lingering trauma of the Holocaust. It’s a book you read not necessarily for its plot, but for its poetic style and the emotions it brings forth.
For you if: You like to read novels written by poets.
Full Review
“Standing together on the winter sidewalk, in the white darkness. I know even less than lamplight in a window, which knows how to pour itself into the street and arouse the longing of one who waits.”
“But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it’s not due to any ability of ours to piece the darkness, it’s the world’s brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.”
“Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what’s between the lines, the mysterious implications.”
Can we all please take a moment to revel in these passages? Anne Michaels’ poetic prose is absolutely the highlight of Fugitive Pieces. Her writing floats you through the book — evenly, decisively, not unpleasantly — even as she asks us to consider the lifetime and generational trauma of the Holocaust.
This book was the 1997 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, making it the second title in this year’s #ReadingWomen challenge. It follows the life of Jakob Beer, who buried himself in the mud to survive a Nazi attack on his village in Poland. He was rescued and raised by a kind man who took him first to Greece, then to Canada, and taught him to love language and life. The first two-thirds or so is narrated by Jakob, and the last third is narrated by a man who knew him tangentially, and whose parents had survived the Holocaust.
This is a book that you absolutely read for the writing, not necessarily for “plot.” If you, like me, fall in love with writing that sings and destroys, pick this book up.
Trigger Warnings
None
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