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.