Michaels, Anne – The Bell Bookshop

Held

Emma — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024

**The international bestseller**
**A Guardian Book of the Autumn 2023**
**Chosen as a book of the year by the independent.co.uk**

‘Michaels’s writing continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction’ OBSERVER
‘Through luminous moments of chance, change, and even grace, Michaels shows us our humanity’ MARGARET ATWOOD
‘Michaels is exceptionally open to beauty’ GUARDIAN

The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces: a soaring and luminous story of chance and change

_________________________________________________

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 – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.

Held is a novel like no other, by a writer at the height of her powers: affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom and compassion.

‘I am blown away by the scale, beauty, weave and thinking of this book … It dances with words, time and ideas in a way that seems to reinvent everything I know about the novel’ RACHEL JOYCE

Held

Emma — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

**A Guardian Book of the Autumn 2023**‘Through luminous moments of chance, change, and even grace, Michaels shows us our humanity – its depths and shadows’ MARGARET ATWOODThe triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces: a soaring and luminous story of chance and change_________________________________________________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 – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. Held is a novel like no other, by a writer at the height of her powers: affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom and compassion.‘I am blown away by the scale, beauty, weave and thinking of this book … It dances with words, time and ideas in a way that seems to reinvent everything I know about the novel’ RACHEL JOYCE

Fugitive Pieces

Emma — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A beautiful new limited edition paperback of Fugitive Pieces, published as part of the Bloomsbury Modern Classics listAthos and I stood together on deck and looked across the water at the bright city. From this distance no one would guess the turmoil that had torn apart Greece ? The sea began to darken, and Athens, glowing in the distance, seemed to float on the horizon like a bright ship.Jakob Beer is seven years old when he is rescued from the ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. He is the only one of his family to have survived the invasion. Adopted by his saviour, the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history. A novel of astounding beauty and wisdom, Fugitive Pieces is a profound meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and love’s ability to restore even the most damaged of hearts.

Fugitive Pieces – Rejacketed

Emma — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Jakob Beer is seven years old when he is rescued from the muddy ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Of his family, he is the only one who has survived. Under the guidance of the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history.

A novel of astounding beauty and wisdom, Fugitive Pieces is a profound meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and love’s ability to resurrect even the most damaged of hearts.