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Book review: The Winter Vault
Fiction: Anne Michaels’s long-awaited graceful and melancholic novel speaks elegantly of loss, but lacks a grounding in reality
Fans of the poet Anne Michaels' bestselling debut novel, Fugitive Pieces, have had to wait 12 years for the follow-up - but the delay has been worth it, said Sylvia Brownrigg in the Guardian. The Winter Vault is a "graceful, melancholic" account of the various bereavements experienced by Avery, an engineer, and his botanist wife, Jean.
The couple meet while Avery is working on the St Lawrence Seaway in Canada, and Jean is mourning the draining of a riverbed that she knew as a child. They move to Egypt, with Avery in charge of rebuilding a temple displaced by the construction of the Aswan Dam. Jean has a miscarriage, and they separate. "Michaels is a great poet of loss", and The Winter Vault does justice to her talent.
It's certainly beautifully written, said Amanda Craig in the Daily Telegraph, but it doesn't feel real. Michaels "needs to think more about her audience as readers of novels rather than poetry". Exactly, said Lesley McDowell in the Scotsman: "Jean and Avery only ever talk to each other like characters in a very literary book, which is, of course, what they are."
The Winter Vault, by Anne Michaels, 341pp (Bloomsbury, £16.99) The Week Bookshop £15.29 (incl p&p) ·
