The Winter Vault

by Anne Michaels

Book Overview

In The Winter Vault, award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels crafts a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, juxtaposing historic dislocations with the most intimate moments of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307270823
• ISBN13: 9780307270825
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 341 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A subliminal masterpiece

The first page of this book (something between an epigraph and a prologue) informs the narrative thrust of the story and glues the abstract elements into a philosophical cohesiveness. This novel, while still a loosely constructed story with main characters and a forward progression, is primarily a meditation on the eternal forces of the human condition entwined with the timeless elements of the earth. The poetic narrative is like an instrument hovering above the earth's atmosphere and producing a lyric and a music of everything that is nascent to life, as well as everything that withstands it, crushes it, beholds it--and it is this instrument that carries the memory of love, light, space, and grief. The bones of the story are the ashes of the earth, and the compost of the earth imbue the bones of the story. On this poignant first page is written "Grief is desire in its purest distillation." I did not initially comprehend this and thought it was a pithy but obtuse statement. However, as I continued to read, it evolved into a meaningful, trenchant theme that coursed through every facet of the novel. Like many of the seemingly elusive cogitations contained in this book, it leads to a profound examination of human nature. Every tragedy in the book is borne from desire, and every desire has a lasting relationship with grief. Avery is a young and able engineer, the son of a deceased but once preeminent engineer, who passionately wants to preserve and continue his father's great legacy. In 1964, Avery is charged with heading an operation in Egypt to remove an ancient temple in embedded rock and placing it on higher ground. In order to do this, they must build a cofferdam, which will displace and flood water temporarily into the water of the adjoining village. The removal of the relics of the temple is an exacting process. One millimeter off in measurement and the relics can be ruined, cracked beyond redemption. This project requires that the Nubian villagers be moved from their homes--these indigenous people who have a deep and native history with this place--and displaced to a new location. Avery's wife, Jean, a botanist who loves to carry seeds from the places of the dead to new ground, and who reveres the natural world, is disquieted by the project, but supportive of her husband's philosophy of man and machinery working together to lofty purposes. But, when personal tragedy and a glitch in the project gouges the foundation of their bond, their ability to find solace with each other is shattered and they must journey alone to find each other again. I am not a scholar who can deconstruct this novel into all its meanings, only a reader who engaged with this enigmatic story. I may have failed to assemble or pinpoint or break it down for a potential reader reading this review. What I can tell you is that this is an atypical story written in poetical prose. It is not a pretentious rambling or unfathomable masquerade. You must pay attention

Beautiful Rumination on Loss

Anne Michaels poetic rumination on loss, The Winter Vault, is a beautiful story, but I do not think it is for every reader. If you require a plot in your novels, this one probably is not for you. If, however, you enjoy reading beautiful language and a thoughtful, almost meandering story, you will certainly enjoy The Winter Vault. The Winter Vault is the story of a young married couple, Avery and Jean, in the mid-1960s. Avery is an engineer who works on river damming for electricity projects. He plans loss, essentially. There is much loss in this novel, planned and unplanned, but, because the writing is so beautiful, so thoughtful, reading The Winter Vault is an uplifting enterprise. Michaels puts a lot in this novel ever so gracefully. The Winter Vault is a well-told tale for fans of serious writing.

A lovely and thoughtful meditative novel

I think this is Michaels' finest work yet. It deserves to be read slowly and thoughtfully--like a meal to be savored, not fast food to be bolted. It is about place and its meaning in our lives, and the inevitable loss of our places to the forces of time and "progress". It is also (of course) about loss, both that of physical space and also of people. But best of all, it also about all the consolations that one can find in dealing with loss. And art like this is one of those consolations.

The audacity of words...

Not many authors would have the boldness to connect three completely unrelated examples of engineering ingenuity in three different continents under one thematic arc, however complex and multilayered. Anne Michaels has done just that in her new, long awaited second novel, THE WINTER VAULT. Michaels' passion is, however, less focused on the impressive visible results of these engineering achievements - the Aswan Dam in Egypt, the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada and the post-World War II reconstruction of Warsaw's Old City - and centred more on the people who have been involved in these constructions or those who have been impacted by the resulting changes. In rich poetic prose, the author interweaves the intimate experiences and musings of her protagonists with broad societal questions and her own philosophical reflections. The story begins in 1964 when the ancient Abu Simbel temple complex in Upper Egypt needed to be carved up and moved block by block, through a complicated process, to higher ground, to protect it from the impending flood waters of the dam. Avery Escher, a British engineer, is overseeing this delicate operation. His relevant experience stems from his training through his father during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Avery is a practical, forward looking man, who can only imagine positive change emerging from such major redesigning efforts. His young wife Jean, having grown up in this region of Canada, had a different perspective on the project, and as a result is less convinced of the potential benefits of change for the affected people. She is also concerned with the need to preserve what was there, such as the local flora and fauna. What brought those two very different people together, other than some parallel aspects in their personal lives? In Michaels' sensitive portraits they come across as complementary soul mates rather than passionate lovers "... at what moment during their years together had this woman... become Jean Escher? He knew it had nothing to do with marriage, not even with sex, but somehow had to do with all this talking they achieved together." And talking to each other they do, indeed! Much of their background is revealed through back story sharing. From the beginning, though, Michaels gives Avery the more prominent voice; strongly influenced by his father, he is grounded in his convictions, confident in his actions. Jean is an excellent and beautiful listener following Avery's story while her own reflections are more easily kept to herself than expressed to her mate. Their dissimilar characters are well explored through their differing reactions to the Abu Simbel project and the visit of an abandoned Nubian village. The author takes great care to convey the beauty of the place, the romantic atmosphere on the one hand and, on the other, the deep pain that those who had to leave it must have experienced. While Jean feels for the refugees and the loss of their ancient history and of their n

"The history of nations...is not only a history of land but a history of water."

Eleven years after the publication of Fugitive Pieces: A Novel, her only other novel, Anne Michaels has published a monumental philosophical novel which is also exciting to read for its characters and their conflicts. Complex and fully integrated themes form the superstructure of the novel in which seemingly ordinary people deal with issues of life and death, love and death, the primacy of memory, the search for spiritual solace, and man's relationships with earth and water--huge themes and huge scope, reflecting huge literary goals. And Michaels is successful, not just in dealing with the big issues and themes affecting mankind itself, but in bringing them to life through individuals who muddle along, seeking some level of personal connection with the world while trying to appreciate life's mysteries. Avery Escher is a young engineer in 1964 when he and his wife Jean travel to Egypt's Abu Simbel site, where he is charged with the task of helping to remove the Great Temple and reconstruct it in the cliff sixty feet higher. Gushing water, which will be released when the Aswan Dam is finished, will flood the area where the temple lies, and the new Lake Nasser will cover all the land downstream. As he works on the site, Avery feels that "Holiness was escaping under the [workers'] drills," and he comes to believe that "the reconstruction was a further desecration, as false as redemption without repentance." All the Nubian people who have lived in the area below the dam for tens of generations have been relocated, but they are bereft of their roots, their memories, and their dead. This is not the first time Avery has been exposed to the dislocation of long-time residents. His father, William Escher, was an engineer who worked to build the St. Lawrence Seaway, which flooded ten Canadian villages near the Eschers' home and built a lake. Stories about the Eschers' displaced family friends are touching and bring the thematic development--and the sadness--down to a more intimate personal level. A third thread takes place in Warsaw, following World War II when the city reconstructed its bombed-out historical core, though its heart was missing, as were its memories--along with almost all its Jewish people. Within this fully developed thematic framework, filled with symbols, Anne Michaels creates a passionate love story between Avery Escher and his wife Jean, a botanist who collects seeds and seedlings, transplants gardens, grafts trees, and, during a particularly difficult time in her relationship with Avery, plants flowers at night in public places to surprise visitors. Their love is tested to the limits by their different understanding of man's relationship with nature and the interconnections of land and water with memory, the past, and ultimately the present and future. Michaels's talent as a poet is obvious in her gorgeous ruminations about the meaning of love and life, and in her evocative, unique imagery, but the beauty of the langua