Reviews:

Fiction

Fugitive Pieces
by Anne Michaels (1996)

Set across a fabric of sorrow and loss, Anne Michaels' tale evokes a pattern in which despair is challenged and overcome. It recounts the life of Jakob Beer, a Jewish boy who witnesses his family murdered by the Nazis, and escapes to hide in the river and woods of Poland. He is miraculously rescued and smuggled to a Greek Island by geologist and philosopher Athos Roussos to survive in hiding. After the war ends, they emigrate to Toronto for Athos to take up a professorship. There Jakob matures as a poet and begins the arduous journey of healing and dispelling his ghosts.

Michaels published two books of poetry before this first novel, and it too is essentially poetic. She creates a powerful sense of place and spirit, the visual outer and abstract inner worlds of her characters. From one vivid scene to another, it is images and ideas, more than dialogue or narrative, that advance the story. Here, the poet is hero. Language is the gift that delivers us from depression, and enables us to love. Ultimately we are left with a choice.