Held: A novel
Beginning on a World War I battlefield and expanding across four generations, this novel traces a family's connections over the course of the twentieth century. War damage, memory, love, loss, and the invisible things captured in photographs are woven together in a poetic and finely controlled style.
作品情報
Memory is handed down as a chain rather than a break, echoing quietly between layers of time.
Starting on a battlefield in 1917, the novel follows a family's memory and wounds as they unfold across a long stretch of time. Through close observation and poetic prose, it asks how photography, love, loss, and the presence of the dead shape individual lives within the larger sweep of history.
レビュー要約
-
The intergenerational structure linking war and memory, along with the restrained poetic prose, is widely admired. Because the novel moves across time so often, readers tend to come away with resonance and contemplation rather than simple intimacy.
書籍情報
- 出版社
- Knopf
- 発売日
- 2024-01-30
- ページ数
- 240ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 14.99 x 2.57 x 21.64 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780593536865
- ISBN-10
- 059353686X
- 価格
- 5060 JPY
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Women's Fiction/Domestic Life
WINNER OF THE GILLER PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES BEST HISTORICAL NOVEL OF THE YEAR • A breathtaking and ineffable new novel from the author of the international bestsellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault —a novel of love and loyalty across generations, at once sweeping and intimate 1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and reignite as the century unfolds. In radiant moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. Held is affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom, and compassion, a novel by a writer at the height of her powers.
ANNE MICHAELS’s books have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. She has been short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice short-listed for the Giller Prize, and twice long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted into a feature film. From 2015 to 2019, she was Toronto’s poet laureate. She lives in Canada.
レビュー
-
Best book in a decade
I absolutely loved this book. It seemed to me to open up to all the unknown possibilities in the universe instead of shutting them down. It verbalises unfashionable philosophical thoughts that reflect the type of thoughts I've always had and most of all, it asks questions that stayed with me for quite a while after I'd finished it. Questions I've asked a lot, to do with the connection between thought and feeling. Are feelings are born of thinking in a certain way? I disagree. When a feeling becomes separated from thought and impossible to identify, what's that? I think it might be transcendence. I'm sure we are born with feelings but think if no trauma has been involved, they are pure and curious. I also loved her expositions of what constituted a crime against nature (or culture). There's a lot that fits with Buddhist teachings. 'Blind chance an argument for destiny he had never considered before'. ! Fantastically cosmic, this book: 'are we not chemistry that transforms light'?' It was enormously hopeful. this foregrounding of cosmic possibilities writ with clarity. What we don't know and what it could mean. The possibility of ghosts and angels all around me! And then, the absolute necessity and core of existence - opposites. And it's now many, many years since I identified the synaptic gap as the gap where meaning can be created, where flexibility is made possible without which, nothing is alive. Gaps. Central. So all in all, what an absolute joy to read this validating and ever expanding novel. Of course, it didn't win the Booker. Not trendy enough. Shame. Now that I've said all that, I really should read it again!
-
Touching and delicate
So beautiful. People, history and stories move slowly, like a poetry book. Some sentences remain with you forever
-
It talks about First World War
Difficult book but very interesting and profound.
-
Qué emoción!
Llegó antes de lo esperado, emocionada con mi adquisición
-
Held
Excellent and intricate read
関連する文学賞
- Giller Prize 第31回（2024年） ・Winner