‘I want to have the reader close to me’: Anne Michaels on her Booker and Giller-nominated novel ‘Held’

TORONTO – For Anne Michaels, a book can’t just say things — it has to listen.
The author of “Held,” shortlisted for both the Giller and Booker prizes, said reciprocity is key to her writing process. She tries to anticipate her readers’ needs as she crafts her novels, ensuring they’ll stay with her as she addresses big, fundamental questions.
“When I know I’m going into areas that are difficult, that maybe we just naturally want to turn away from — the horror of war or even moments of intense beauty that are hard to sustain or bear — I want to have the reader close to me,” the Toronto-based poet-novelist said in a recent video call.
“I want to be able to lead us right to the edge just before we turn away.”
In “Held,” a multi-generational examination of a family across more than a century, Michaels seeks to answer questions about trauma and war; about the ways we make meaning out of life; about the love that creates families.
The book is non-linear, each section a sort of vignette that exposes another piece of the family’s story. It opens on the battlefields of the First World War where a photographer-turned-soldier lies close to death. The story follows him home to England where he must grapple with what the war took from him and what it left behind.
From there Michaels moves forward and back through time, introducing the reader to the man’s descendants, their spouses, their spouses’ parents.
Each generation asks iterations of the same questions, and each brings the reader closer to an answer. How do we understand the world? How do we remember? How do we console ourselves and each other?
These questions, Michaels said, are too big to answer in poetry, her original medium. That’s why she writes novels as well.
“Held” is only her third novel in a decades-long career. Her first, “Fugitive Pieces,” came out in 1996, a full decade after her debut poetry collection “The Weight of Oranges.”
“Fugitive Pieces” was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, won the Trillium Book Award, as well as the award now known as the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the U.K.‘s Women’sPrize for Fiction. Her second novel, “The Winter Vault,” was published in 2009 and made the Giller short list that year.
Though she appreciates that novels give her more time with the reader, allowing her to explore more complex topics as she weaves together a narrative, they also take far longer to write.
“It takes years to figure out how a book fits together,” she said.
“Sometimes one section speaks what is not said in another section. There’s so much listening within the book — to the generations, to the people who love each other, to the people who are separated through time or distance … the book is listening. I hope the reader is listening. I am listening.”
“Held” is one of five books shortlisted for this year’s $100,000 Giller Prize and one of six that was up for the U.K.-based Booker Prize, which has a purse of 50,000 British pounds, roughly $90,000.
Jurors for the Booker describe “Held” as “a powerful and lyrical kaleidoscope of a novel” that is “created from the scattered images and memories of four generations of a family across all kinds of lived experiences.”
On Tuesday, British novelist Samantha Harvey took home that award for her novel “Orbital.”
The Giller is set to be handed out next week.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.