A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.

A Truly, Truly Awful Novel., 17 Aug 2008
Really, I wanted to give this awfull rubbish NO stars, but they wouldn't let me.

As I staggered, punch drunk, towards the end of this truly terrible book I kept turning, in disbelief, to the pages-long, glowing blurbs. What madness had overcome the entire literary establishment in 1997? Had they all had their brains sucked out with a straw before being allowed to review it? Who knows. It was useful to remind myself that until some loonie foisted it upon me whilst on holiday in Greece this year (2008) I had never actually heard of it. Given that I subscribe to the LRB, read hundreds of books a year and am a general all round smart alec it is probably no accident that this pile of pooh has fallen off the radar.

So what's wrong? Well just about everything. The prose style is hilariously 'poetic' - ie. pretentious. Every damn paragraph sounds like a parody of the one before or after - it is unremittingly predictable and boring. (Incidentally - why would two of the characters visit the site of a 'fortressed' Iroquois camp when 'fortified' would have sufficed in English as we know it? Merely one example of 'poetry' in action) The dialogue, if it can be described as such, is utterly unrealistic. The characters are samey, lame, unconvincing and wincingly wise and wonderful. The two first person narrators are men (and I'm one) but they come across as completely soppy, over empathetic, North American Jewish women.

The content is no less awful than the style. The narrative interest is negligible - plot on the back of a postage stamp - and whilst this is, of course, no great condemnation by itself the hackneyed, creepy holocaust element has nothing original nor interesting going for it. Read 'The White Hotel' if you really want to shock yourself and enjoy the prose.

As I read this pile of tosh I kept thinking, 'my god this author must be hell to know / live with.' She is humourless, dull, turgid and can't write for toffee. For what it is worth the melodies of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Ba Ba BLack Sheep' are not identical. Just try humming them.

Breathtaking piece of work., 03 Jul 2008
This is an absolutely mesmerising novel. The language is beautiful and the emotions and bonds are expertly conveyed resulting in the sense that you are spiritually attached to the characters. The story is a reflection of the actions of humankind and as a result the myriad of emotions drawn to the surface by this book are delectable, abhorrent and everything in between.

Fugitive Pieces, 24 May 2007
Anne Michael's book is a highly evocative yet frustrating read. She is well-equipped with atmospheric language to describe the seasonal sights and smells from Poland to Greece and Canada. There are long and dreamy passages devoted to the sensations of time and place - the aromas and tastes rendered with real tactility and obvious pleasure in the writing. This is undermined, deliberately, when the reader is shocked out of reverie by explicit factual accounts of Nazi brutality - horrifying in their frankness. Despite these moments of jarring reality, much of the book is poetic in style, with a loose and unusually fragmented narrative. So far, so good.

Where she falls short is in the contextualisation of these swings of mood into a tangible reality for her characters. All such characters (from the orphan-poet Jakob, to the two women he married, his closest friends and his surrogate father Athos) are offputtingly brilliant. Uniformly erudite but witty, pensive but charming, their insouciant intellect quickly begins to grate. Descriptions of Arcadian nights spent in each other's company are interrupted by a character's off-the-cuff historical anecdote, or aesthetic observation, or (early in the book) precocious comment, so pregnant with significance that the chapter is often ended immediately to allow the reader to wallow in the light of its pure and generous insight. Not a person inhabiting the pages of this book deigns to entertain a prosaic thought or action, so immersed they are in their numerous talents and eclectic intellectual pursuits. Literary and historical references surface with such frequency that it is hard to know who's thinking them, let alone why they are meant to matter. We are led to believe that both the principle character and his adopted father are prone to depressions but never see the raw materials. Depression in 'Fugitive Pieces' seems to amount to a character spending a lot of time awe-struck by the weight of their own ideas. I pitied Jakob for his childhood, but was alienated from identifying with his emotions when the author seems to be at pains to convince us that he is equally crippled by the gravity of his intellect. Despite the sustained use of geology and archeology as metaphors, the only people getting their hands dirty are the Nazis. The characters in this book are evidently vehicles for the authors philosophical preoccupations and a long way from tangible human beings. For this reason there is little for the reader to empathise with here, being a mere mortal intellectually. Its just too showy, too smugly self-congratulating, to be a good novel.

Beautiful, but..., 15 May 2007
I will not presume to denigrate the quality of the writing, it is undeniably good, but the style, mixed with the mournful nature of the story, makes for very heavy going. Neither will I ridicule the plot. It has an unusual plot line, yes, but that is fine and comparisons with Finnegans Wake are very, very wide of the mark and highly unfair on Michaels.

I do have slight concerns about the characters. Not that they aren't human, they are, startling so, but their thoughts and 'dialogue' (such as it is) elevate them away from the everyday which makes it harder for the reader to relate to them. No one really speaks or thinks like this in real life, and, more importantly, the characters all have the same voice. This is odd because they have such varied backgrounds and languages. This results in the voices blending into one until they become indistinct. This seriously damages their credibility.

My other concern is the sheer bleakness and hopelessness of plot. Whenever a brief shoot of hope appears, Michaels stamps on it as if afraid it might take over. I know there are few subjects so lugubrious as The Holocaust but the lack of any humour to break up the perpetual gloom desensitizes the reader which is a shame.

Beyond the beauty of some of the lines, I did not enjoy this book at all and was glad to finish it. Sorry.

Misunderstood?, 14 May 2007
I'm a little saddened that people feel the need to try and rubbish this book - and with such a lack of comprehension. Phrases such as 'The book read like one of those continuous stream of consciousness things you might find in Finegan's wake and made about as much sense' are really nothing but the pseudo-intellectual whinings of people who have nothing better to do with their time than criticise what they have failed to understand.

Rant out of the way. Contrary to the criticisms, for all its weight 'Fugitive Pieces' is an extremely graceful novel; it is a breeze to read, and very moving. The weight of thought cannot be avoided, however, and shouldn't be. Few modern novels are quite as complex and thought provoking as this. Coetzee is perhaps an obvious point of comparison; he and Michaels are both evidently thinkers, but Michaels allows herself to inflect her thoughts with far more poetry than Coetzee would ever permit. That sense of poetry - Michaels' main mode expression - gives 'Pieces' a beauty rare in modern prose, genuinely. The depth of thought behind it all is simply another, non-distracting, level at which the book can be appreciated; anyone interested in the ideas of memory, poetry, tragedy and survival will find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about 'Fugitive Pieces' long after reading it.

In other words, do read it. Ignore the reviewers who seem to hate what they can't understand, please.