HELD

Anne Michaels. HELD. Penguin, Random House, M&S, 2023.

Winner of the Giller Prize for fiction, 2024. I bought this book because I felt guilty, having tried and never succeeded to get into her first novel, FUGITIVE PIECES. I will read it now.

HELD is like reading a novel-length poem. The Table of Contents is helpful because it forewarns the reader that the time line is not linear--from 1908 to 2025. At first there seem to be no recurring characters but certain objects seem to be passed down from earlier generations. 

I read the whole novel aloud, just for the sound and the rhythm of it, and the giant challenging vocabulary. 

Characters include returned soldiers, photographers, musicians, scientists including Marie Curie, suffaggets, and contemporary lovers.

Sometimes there was a bit too much abstraction--seemingly living inside someone else's head. But that's just me.