Fugitive Pieces

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Unfortunately, I have no book set in Ireland to review today. Rather, I have my last review from the books I read last month. Umm yeah, I’ve been a bit behind.

Fugitive Pieces
Anne Michaels
May 1998
293 pages

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FTC disclosure: I’ve owned this book for years. I think it was a gift from my mom, although I’m not 100% sure. I do know it was acquired pre-blog, so there’s no way in hell I got this one from a publisher.

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So why did this one languish for so long on my bookshelf? I had it in my mind that it was about something else (although what I couldn’t say). But when I saw a review for it over at Five Borough Book Review, I was both intrigued, and reminded that I actually owned this one. Salvatore wrote a very thoughtful review, and after re-reading it I think I have stage fright. Or writer’s block. Or something. You can read Salvatore’s review to get a sense of what the book is about. I’m just going to attempt to answer the questions that Salvatore posed at the end of his review:

Would a novel like this, one that seems to have no beginning or ending, no explanation for most of its decisions, be bothersome to you? For those who have read it, why do you think this was so successful in the marketplace, as usually experimental works like these don’t have much of an audience?

It wasn’t bothersome at all. I think it could be intimidating, but it can be read in so many different ways. I was fascinated by the characters, especially Jakob. And also the impact that the Holocaust continued to have on Ben, even though his parents were the ones who lived through it. It was also interesting to know that Jakob and Ben, our two main characters, had both been profoundly impacted by the Holocaust, although one directly and one indirectly. So my reading focus was on these two men, who told different, yet similar and intertwined, tales. And I think the fact that the book is character driven made the absence of a clear beginning and end less troublesome than it usually would be, such as in a novel that is more plot driven. Plus, there’s the language. I certainly wasn’t immune to the language:

I ran from the sound of the river into the woods, dark as the inside of a box. I ran until the first light wrung the last grayness out of the stars, dripping dirty light between the trees. I knew what to do. I took a stick and dug. I planted myself like a turnip and hid my face with leaves.

My head between the branches, bristling points like my father’s beard. I was safely buried, my wet clothes cold as armor. Panting like a dog. My arms tight up against my chest, my neck stretched back, tears crawling like insects into my ears. I had no choice but to look straight up. The dawn sky was milky with new spirits. Soon I couldn’t avoid the absurdity of daylight even by closing my eyes. It poked down, pinned me like the broken branches, like my father’s beard.

Then I felt the worst shame of my life: I was pierced with hunger. And suddenly I realized, my throat aching without sounds — Bella.

I read this one before I read The Disappeared, another Canadian novel that is beautifully written and deals with genocide and its lasting effects on people’s lives and emotions. The books are very different, but they both have a very poetic feel (actually, I can’t believe I just said that, since I avoid poetry like the plague). Anyways, the language is just gorgeous, but still very readable.

And I find it odd that I’ve been noticing language lately. I used to say I was more into the characters, but for these two novels the language has really struck me, and stayed with me. Has anyone else read this book? If so, what did you think?