First, when I started reading this book, I knew that most of the rhetoric would be profoundly saturated with beauty and delicacy. It started out as such, being taken away to some foreign continuum where people and places can perceive language and complexity beyond the surface. The gossamer dialogue betwixt the two lovers conveyed insatiable desire for each other throughout their lives together, as well as apart, this Jean and Avery. Throughout this book I was taken to war-torn Poland, romantic Canada, and in the archeology and arcana of the Nile River. What made this rhetoric transcend these romantic concessions was that it was all part of one vein, one filament – and that was to make connections with the world. When you live, make connections with those that want to hear you intimately or indirectly, and give way to those that judge you. In death, make connections to what has been provided for you, your friends, your experiences, your surroundings, so that your burden becomes a part of you.
The Winter Vault took us beyond the regularity of life, and transposing a world where every detail is an explosion of meaning. Even in setting, at one moment we are finding the love of Jean and Avery, followed immediately with the experience of living in the Congo – with life and death in this tragic venue. Michaels adds spectacular insight to flora and biology to combine nature and imagination to this beautiful story. Now don’t get me wrong, at times, the weight compounds with the losing track of the story because of the language, and you can become frustrating – the sinews of her syntax breathes very heavy at times. Once that happens, take a break from it. Like Yeat’s Byzantium – it is a place where you are welcome, once you accept your welcoming. This winter vault, where the dead rest, will be remembered for some time.
Overall, I did enjoy this book – but it’s a type of book where mood plays a major role. The story takes a back seat to the encapsulating, blossoming world that the characters are weaved in. The tangential tone is that much more fulfilling, and the language plays a vital part. Can you dig it? I knew that you could!
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Waiting to be Buried
"No two facts are too far apart to be put together." (p. 123)
Throughout The Winter Vault, Anne Michaels lays down the facts of the stories the characters tell in an intricate mosaic where by the end a larger tale of memory, Identity, Loss and Love emerges. As Avery explains in one of his stories about his father,
"Every object,' my father used to say, 'is also a concept.' If you place two or three or ten things next to each other that have never been next to each other before this will produce a new question. And nothing proves the existence of the future like a question."
The question the novel poses is how do we create meaning with the life we are given and the losses we suffer. The answer, Michaels, provides, is: we create it together. "We teach each other how to live" (p.324).
We are more than our personal narratives, of where we are born, who our parents were, our jobs, the broad sweeps of history we have experienced. We are all of these things in complex powerful ways, but we are also all of the people we come into contact with, and the stories we tell each other. All of these things intermingle "until it was impossible to tell them apart, the memories that belong to me and the memories that didn't, as if by virtue of collective loss they became collective memory" (p.305).
There is of course much more going on in this novel than my brief discourse. I wallowed in this book, the language was stunningly beautiful. The ideas and the way she played with those ideas were a joy. One of the better books I have read in years. "Just by living . . . we change the world, and no one lives without causing pain" (p.333).
I also found it interesting how almost all of the books we have read could be found in this book, from Bhabha and liminal spaces, to Lewis and belief, to Hedges and the force of war to give meaning. We have read some good books. Thanks to all of you for reading with me and letting me listen to you think.
Throughout The Winter Vault, Anne Michaels lays down the facts of the stories the characters tell in an intricate mosaic where by the end a larger tale of memory, Identity, Loss and Love emerges. As Avery explains in one of his stories about his father,
"Every object,' my father used to say, 'is also a concept.' If you place two or three or ten things next to each other that have never been next to each other before this will produce a new question. And nothing proves the existence of the future like a question."
The question the novel poses is how do we create meaning with the life we are given and the losses we suffer. The answer, Michaels, provides, is: we create it together. "We teach each other how to live" (p.324).
We are more than our personal narratives, of where we are born, who our parents were, our jobs, the broad sweeps of history we have experienced. We are all of these things in complex powerful ways, but we are also all of the people we come into contact with, and the stories we tell each other. All of these things intermingle "until it was impossible to tell them apart, the memories that belong to me and the memories that didn't, as if by virtue of collective loss they became collective memory" (p.305).
There is of course much more going on in this novel than my brief discourse. I wallowed in this book, the language was stunningly beautiful. The ideas and the way she played with those ideas were a joy. One of the better books I have read in years. "Just by living . . . we change the world, and no one lives without causing pain" (p.333).
I also found it interesting how almost all of the books we have read could be found in this book, from Bhabha and liminal spaces, to Lewis and belief, to Hedges and the force of war to give meaning. We have read some good books. Thanks to all of you for reading with me and letting me listen to you think.
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