Fugitive Pieces
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Product Description
Review
“Kerry Shale brings his consummate skills with voice and character to bear”
Herald 19/3/98
“Michaels’
poetic prose spans 60 years and her story is wonderfully told by Shale, who adds music to the words of this memorable, haunting tale.”
Belfast Telegraph 7/2/98
“Told by the incomparable Kerry Shale.”
Irish News 10/1/98
Review
'Monumental Fugitive Pieces is the most important book I have read for forty years' John Berger, Observer 'This is a novel to lose yourself in; let the language pour over you, depositing its richness like waves lapping sand onto a beach. Michaels is a novelist of unusual and compelling power' The Times 'This is a book to read many times. I simply can't imagine a better being published this year' Independent 'A powerful novel of history, loss, love and exile It would not be easy to find a modern novel to match this one for line-by-line beauty' Independent on Sunday
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Fugitive Pieces is Canadian poet Anne Michaels' first novel and it is beautiful in the extreme. At the heart of this lovely and moving book is the struggle to understand the despair of loss and the solace of love and, most of all, the difficulty of reconciling the two. The protagonists are two Jewish men, one a Holocaust survivor, the other the son of Holocaust survivor parents.
Material such as that explored in Fugitive Pieces could very easily become trite and cliched, but in Michaels' extraordinarily gifted hands suffering, loss and grief become nothing less than transcendent. An extraordinarily gifted writer, Michaels creates wonderful characters and tells an engrossing story through the use of gorgeous, but spare, dialogue and subtle metaphor.
Material such as that explored in Fugitive Pieces could very easily become trite and cliched, but in Michaels' extraordinarily gifted hands suffering, loss and grief become nothing less than transcendent. An extraordinarily gifted writer, Michaels creates wonderful characters and tells an engrossing story through the use of gorgeous, but spare, dialogue and subtle metaphor.
The plot is a rather simple one (this is definitely a character driven story) but it is profound and also a profoundly moving meditation on the nature of grief and the redemptive power of love. The first line in the book, "Time is a blind guide," is haunting, but it is also ironic, for the story will prove that time is anything but blind.
One of the protagonists, Jakob Beer, was orphaned as a seven-year old boy in Poland. Although the death of his parents affects Jakob most greviously, it is his sorrow at the death of his beloved older sister, Bella, that will remain with him for a lifetime. Jakob, himself, escapes the Nazis and flees into the forests of Poland where he is rescued by a Greek geologist, Athos Roussos, who eventually smuggles the boy to the Greek island of Zakynthos.
On Zakynthos, Jakob can finally begin to put his life back together again. He is, however, haunted by memories of Bella, a gifted pianist. It is Bella who ultimately becomes Jakob's Beatrice as he begins his fascination with the poetry that will play a central role in the balance of his life.
Athos, himself a widower, and Jakob, an orphan, seem to find in each other what they thought they had forever lost: a sense of family and abiding love and trust. As Athos finds joy in raising Jakob, Jakob finds joy in the values Athos seeks to instill in him: the love of language, scholarship and ethics.
Although Athos seeks to heal Jakob, he does not attempt to obliterate his past. Ïnstead, Athos encourages Jakob to learn his Hebrew alphabet, telling him it is the future he is remembering rather than the past. As Jakob practices both the twisting and ornate letters of Hebrew and Greek, Athos tells him that both languages contain the "ancient loneliness of ruins."
The narrative eventually moves from Greece to Toronto where Jakob becomes the product of his love for the late Bella and the teachings of Athos. The love given him so freely by both will serve as a continuum for the rest of Jakob's life as he realizes that the best teachers encourage, not the mind, but the heart. Jakob comes to know that Athos instilled in him the necessity of love and, that, to honor both Athos and Bella he must resolve a "perpetual thirst."
The story closes with the character of Ben, a young professor who has become fascinated by both Jakob and his work. Their relationship is reminiscent of the relationship of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Ulysses. Ben's family was the very antithesis of the relationship shared by Athos and Jakob. In Ben's family there was no energy, no love, no sadness. Ben seeks strength and purpose in Jakob's life and in his words, words that have the ability to transmute the horror of war and the loss of family. Words that have the power to speak that which, heretofore, has remained unspoken.
Fugitive Pieces is a beautiful novel, a meditation on love and loss and grief and solace. It is a quiet book but one that is immensely profound. Anne Michaels is a gifted poet and with Fugitive Pieces she proves that she is an extraordinary gifted writer of prose as well.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is obvious that Fugitive Pieces is a beatifully written novel, the language is descriptive and flowing and it is dripping with poetry. However, my enjoyment of the novel was lessened somewhat by how I'd heard other people describe it - "Overpowering", "Breathtaking", and some said they could only read it in small bursts it was so intense. This made me realise that I didn't feel like that at all, that I wasn't overwhelmed or pinned to my seat or anything, it just seemed like a poetic novel that i knew i should be affected by but wasn't.
Despite this, Fugitive Pieces is thought provoking and intelligent, and there were parts at which I did have to stop and read again to take it in properly. So I'm still not sure whether it is a fantastic novel, or if I just don't get it!
Despite this, Fugitive Pieces is thought provoking and intelligent, and there were parts at which I did have to stop and read again to take it in properly. So I'm still not sure whether it is a fantastic novel, or if I just don't get it!
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Fugitive pieces is one of the best books I have ever read. It is beautiful not just because of the poetic language but because it addresses so many fundamental human issues that affect all of us. Jacob's journey through life covers many aspects that will affect all of us at some time like loss, living with the uncertainty of knowing what happened to people who died, the struggle to cope with a normal existence after trauma, finding happiness late in life, I could go on. Michaels tackles bigger issues too like what happened to the children of survivors, how our parents' often had a life that we knew nothing about and how we often have to forgive ourselves for having a poor relationship with our parents. Essentially it is about the fragile web that binds us all and makes us human. It is not a 'sequential' novel as such. It moves along at its own pace and almost appears to be the thought of the narrator. it does not have a 'plot' (most good novels don't, you might notice) and it is not essentially a book ABOUT the holocaust. I agree, if you want to read a book about the Holocaust, buy Primo Levi. If you want to read a beautiful, provocative book about humanity and the fragility of life, buy this one. I wish I could have written it!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not as engaging as it could've been
Fugitive Pieces, a novel by the poet Anne Michaels is a book of two narrators. In the first part our narrator is Jakob, who is rescued as a child by a Greek man, Athos who smuggles... Read more
Published 3 months ago by R. A. Davison
Disappointing
This seems to be one of those love-it-or-hate-it books. It has generated a great deal of praise, some of which seemed quite excessive to me, and no doubt added to my... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Phil O'Sofa
Fugitive Pieces
I believe that this is an extremely cleverly written book with complex emotional themes. The writer uses deeply thought provoking paragraphs drawing on manuscripts, and geological,... Read more
Published 13 months ago by ChrisP
great book beautifully written
Got this book to read for our book group. Never heard of the Author nor the book. It is beautifully written and reaches so many parts of the emotions. Read more
Published 18 months ago by silverTraveller
Fugitive pieces
What a clever, deep and wonderful book. I cried, wanted to go to Greece and read the book all over again instead.
Published on 28 May 2010 by Joachine G. Davidson Milo
Don't bother
I had really high expectations for this book, the synopsis sounded very enticing. oh how I was let down. Read more
Published on 17 Feb 2010 by Abs
'There can be no lyric poetry after Auschwitz'
so wrote, Theodore Adorno, and I don't think I fully grasped what he meant until I read this contemptible novel. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2010 by Nightingale
I beg to differ...
It takes more than serious themes and sincere good intentions to make a good novel - I suspect many readers, some of whom really should have known better, have been blinded by the... Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2009 by DTH
Fugitve Pieces
I give this book to so many people. The author is a poet and the language reflects this. The reader is caught up immediately in the sheer beauty of the writing but it is also an... Read more
Published on 30 Oct 2009 by Breaca
An amazing poem
This is clearly one of the best books written in the recent years. The author, a poet, writes in a quite, sophisticated voice, the story of two men torn from their world into the... Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2009 by Amir Szold
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