The Winter Vault [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Anne Michaels (Author), Karen White (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 2009

In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settle into a houseboat on the Nile just below Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for the dismantling and reconstruction of the temple, a "machine-worshipper" who is nonetheless sensitive to their destructive power. Jean is a botanist by vocation, passionately interested in everything that grows. They met on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, witnessing the construction of the Seaway as it swallowed towns, homes, and lives. Now, at the edge of another world about to be inundated, they create their own world, exchanging "the innocent memories we don't know we hold until given the gift of the eagerness of another."But when tragedy strikes, they return to separate lives in Toronto: Avery to school to study architecture; and Jean into the orbit of Lucjan, a Polish emigre artist whose haunting tales of occupied Warsaw pull her further from Avery but offer her the chance to assume her most essential life.Stunning in its explorations of both the physical and emotional worlds of its characters, intensely moving and lyrical, The Winter Vault is a radiant work of fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Profound loss, desolation and rebuilding are the literal and metaphoric themes of Michaels's exquisite second novel (after Fugitive Pieces). Avery Escher is a Canadian engineer recently moved to a houseboat on the Nile with his new wife, Jean, in 1964. Avery's part of a team of engineers trying to salvage Abu Simbel, which is about to be flooded by the new Aswan dam. His wife, Jean, meanwhile, carries with her childhood memories of flooded villages and the heavy absence of her mother, who died when she was young. Now, the sight of the entire Nubian nation being evacuated from their native land before it's flooded affects both Avery and Jean intensely. Jean's pregnancy seems a possible redemption, but their daughter is stillborn, and Jean falls into despair, shunning the former intimacy of her marriage. When the couple returns to Canada, they set up separate lives and another man enters the picture. Michaels is especially impressive at making a rundown of construction materials or the contents of a market as evocative as the shared moments between two young lovers. A tender love story set against an intriguing bit of history is handled with uncommon skill. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Anne Michaels has published several acclaimed poetry collections, including The Weight of Oranges and Miner’s Pond. Her background as a poet shines through in The Winter Vault, which awed critics with its many elegant, vibrant, and luminous passages and Michaels’s endless curiosity about science, engineering, and architecture. Unfortunately, many of these same critics were conflicted in their overall reviews: they reluctantly felt hampered by rolling monologues, pedantic segments, uninspiring characters, and an awkward story structure. The San Francisco Chronicle even remarked: “[T]hese long recitations of memory and conjecture, while exquisite, grow exhausting.” Overall, critics cited this latest from Michaels as a beautiful, important novel, but they were skeptical of its widespread appeal.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,Unabridged CD edition (June 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400112451
• ISBN-13: 978-1400112456
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,252,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anne Michaels's first novel was the international best seller Fugitive Pieces, now a major motion picture. It won several awards, including the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Guardian Fiction Award, and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Michaels is also the author of three highly acclaimed poetry collections. She lives in Toronto.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The history of nations...is not only a history of land but a history of water.", April 21, 2009

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Winter Vault (Hardcover)

Eleven years after the publication of Fugitive Pieces: A Novel, her only other novel, Anne Michaels has published a monumental philosophical novel which is also exciting to read for its characters and their conflicts. Complex and fully integrated themes form the superstructure of the novel in which seemingly ordinary people deal with issues of life and death, love and death, the primacy of memory, the search for spiritual solace, and man's relationships with earth and water--huge themes and huge scope, reflecting huge literary goals. And Michaels is successful, not just in dealing with the big issues and themes affecting mankind itself, but in bringing them to life through individuals who muddle along, seeking some level of personal connection with the world while trying to appreciate life's mysteries.

Avery Escher is a young engineer in 1964 when he and his wife Jean travel to Egypt's Abu Simbel site, where he is charged with the task of helping to remove the Great Temple and reconstruct it in the cliff sixty feet higher. Gushing water, which will be released when the Aswan Dam is finished, will flood the area where the temple lies, and the new Lake Nasser will cover all the land downstream. As he works on the site, Avery feels that "Holiness was escaping under the [workers'] drills," and he comes to believe that "the reconstruction was a further desecration, as false as redemption without repentance."

All the Nubian people who have lived in the area below the dam for tens of generations have been relocated, but they are bereft of their roots, their memories, and their dead. This is not the first time Avery has been exposed to the dislocation of long-time residents. His father, William Escher, was an engineer who worked to build the St. Lawrence Seaway, which flooded ten Canadian villages near the Eschers' home and built a lake. Stories about the Eschers' displaced family friends are touching and bring the thematic development--and the sadness--down to a more intimate personal level. A third thread takes place in Warsaw, following World War II when the city reconstructed its bombed-out historical core, though its heart was missing, as were its memories--along with almost all its Jewish people.

Within this fully developed thematic framework, filled with symbols, Anne Michaels creates a passionate love story between Avery Escher and his wife Jean, a botanist who collects seeds and seedlings, transplants gardens, grafts trees, and, during a particularly difficult time in her relationship with Avery, plants flowers at night in public places to surprise visitors. Their love is tested to the limits by their different understanding of man's relationship with nature and the interconnections of land and water with memory, the past, and ultimately the present and future.

Michaels's talent as a poet is obvious in her gorgeous ruminations about the meaning of love and life, and in her evocative, unique imagery, but the beauty of the language is matched by the richness of the novel's underlying concepts, which give depth and significance to this challenging and satisfying novel. Raising fascinating questions, Michaels piques the imagination and guides the reader into new realms of thought. n Mary Whipple

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The audacity of words..., May 7, 2009

By 

Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Winter Vault (Hardcover)

Not many authors would have the boldness to connect three completely unrelated examples of engineering ingenuity in three different continents under one thematic arc, however complex and multilayered. Anne Michaels has done just that in her new, long awaited second novel, THE WINTER VAULT. Michaels' passion is, however, less focused on the impressive visible results of these engineering achievements - the Aswan Dam in Egypt, the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada and the post-World War II reconstruction of Warsaw's Old City - and centred more on the people who have been involved in these constructions or those who have been impacted by the resulting changes. In rich poetic prose, the author interweaves the intimate experiences and musings of her protagonists with broad societal questions and her own philosophical reflections.

The story begins in 1964 when the ancient Abu Simbel temple complex in Upper Egypt needed to be carved up and moved block by block, through a complicated process, to higher ground, to protect it from the impending flood waters of the dam. Avery Escher, a British engineer, is overseeing this delicate operation. His relevant experience stems from his training through his father during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Avery is a practical, forward looking man, who can only imagine positive change emerging from such major redesigning efforts. His young wife Jean, having grown up in this region of Canada, had a different perspective on the project, and as a result is less convinced of the potential benefits of change for the affected people. She is also concerned with the need to preserve what was there, such as the local flora and fauna.

What brought those two very different people together, other than some parallel aspects in their personal lives? In Michaels' sensitive portraits they come across as complementary soul mates rather than passionate lovers "... at what moment during their years together had this woman... become Jean Escher? He knew it had nothing to do with marriage, not even with sex, but somehow had to do with all this talking they achieved together." And talking to each other they do, indeed! Much of their background is revealed through back story sharing. From the beginning, though, Michaels gives Avery the more prominent voice; strongly influenced by his father, he is grounded in his convictions, confident in his actions. Jean is an excellent and beautiful listener following Avery's story while her own reflections are more easily kept to herself than expressed to her mate.

Their dissimilar characters are well explored through their differing reactions to the Abu Simbel project and the visit of an abandoned Nubian village. The author takes great care to convey the beauty of the place, the romantic atmosphere on the one hand and, on the other, the deep pain that those who had to leave it must have experienced. While Jean feels for the refugees and the loss of their ancient history and of their natural environment, Avery prefers to see the positive side of new beginnings: the life that buildings can emanate. His perspective of "home" is that is something that we create over time and not the place where we were born or grew up. "Home is our first real mistake. It is the one error that changes everything... It is from this moment that we begin to build our home in the world. It is this place that we furnish with smell, taste, a talisman, a name."

The couple's fundamentally different mind-sets come to the fore when tragedy strikes them to the core. They return to Canada to struggle with the fallout in their own, separate ways. What is striking right away in this second part of the novel is that, apparently, the "talking they achieved together" and that had cemented their relationship, is no longer an adequate tool for dealing with the crisis. Avery quietly fades into the background while the focus is on Jean as she attempts to reclaim her poise. Can she change sufficiently to succeed in her efforts? There are questions that linger.

It is at this point that, rather unexpectedly, the third successful architectural construction project is woven into the narrative. Using the same technique as earlier - personal flashbacks - timelines appear to be deliberately blurred, as the author's focus is as much on the devastating impact of occupation, destruction and dictatorships (Nazi and Soviet) on the population of Warsaw as on the reconstruction itself. Again, Michaels expands into opposing philosophical positions: faithful restoration of historical sites as a positive step to reclaim the past vs. any restoration of historical places defined as fake and therefore fundamentally wrong.

Michaels delves into a range of fundamental themes, such as human suffering due to displacement, loss of cultural roots and identity, the needs of the many over the rights of the few - the Nubians vs. the Aswan Dam, etc. Yet, she is first and foremost a poet. Her language and imagery is often impressionistic, leaving the reader to interpret the meaning and, even more so - not always successfully - to attempt linking poetic phrases to the novel's depicted realities and characters. At times, Michaels interweaves her own musings, and while we can admire her power of words, it can also distract the reader away from the narrative flow.

The two parts of the novel could easily be treated as stand-alone novellas, linked loosely through Jean as the consistently present protagonist throughout. Whether Michaels brings the novel and the story of Avery and Jean convincingly to a close in the short third section has to be left to the reader to find out. For this reader, a number of issues remain unresolved. It is evident also that the author's overriding preoccupation in this novel is not to produce a plot driven or character-based story, but to open the reader's mind to important and existential topics, even if they at times swell beyond the confines of a more traditional novel. [Friederike Knabe]

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Loss, April 27, 2009

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Winter Vault (Hardcover)

Readers will doubtless encounter rave reviews of this book, and indeed it deserves them for its greatness of scope, generally fine writing, and thematic resonance. But compared to Anne Michaels' previous novel, FUGITIVE PIECES, this is less a story than a poetic meditation, a collection of evocative images and pregnant thoughts, tied to characters who seldom spring into independent life. Most people will admire Michaels' ideas, which certainly have an integrity of their own, but those looking for narrative consistency may well be disappointed.

The start is promising. The setting is Egypt in 1964, during the construction of the Aswan High Dam that will hold back the Nile, creating the huge Lake Nasser, and displacing thousands of Nubian villages. One of the engineers supervising the removal of the temples of Abu Simbel to higher ground is Avery Escher, who lives on a small houseboat with his new wife, Jean. The story of their courtship and marriage in Canada is interwoven with their year in Egypt, as both Avery and Jean are affected by the human tragedies that they see around them, and by a loss that touches them more personally. Something of Anne Michaels' evocative scale of reference, together with a poesy that can veer into silliness, can be seen from the following:

"When Avery lay next to his wife, waiting for sleep, listening to the river, it was as if the whole long Nile was their bed. [...] The river, he felt, heard every word, wove every sigh into itself, until it was filled with dreaming, swelled with the last breath of kings, with the hard breathing of labourers from three thousand years ago to that very moment. He spoke to the river, and he listened to the river, his hand on his wife in the place their child would some day open her, where his mouth had already so often spoken her, as if he could take the child's name into his mouth from her body. Rebecca, Cleopatra, Sarah, and all the desert women who knew the value of water."

These lines speak of the passage of time, but they are also filled with the possibility of renewal. And renewal will be needed, since the book as a whole is about loss and the difficulty of recovering from loss. Although not a Holocaust novel as FUGITIVE PIECES had been, it still has the specter of the Holocaust lurking in the background; the book is an extended Kaddish for lost peoples, lost places, and losses too personal to name. A winter vault, it turns out, is a small sanctified building that houses the dead while the ground is too frozen for burial. "The winter dead wait... for the earth to relent and receive them. They wait, in histories of thousands of pages, where the word love is never mentioned." In this book, the word love is mentioned many times, and perhaps that love will be enough to achieve a proper burial and rebirth -- but by the end, the writing has become too disjointed for the reader to know or perhaps care.

The trouble is that the winter vault image is pasted into the book, not experienced directly. As she had done in FUGITIVE PIECES, Michaels goes off in a new direction about halfway through, introducing new characters who have only a peripheral relationship to the protagonists. The lines above are spoken to Jean by a Polish artist named Lucjan, whose personal experiences of loss come from the destruction of Warsaw in 1945. Certainly, this extra layer of images deepens the book, but it also makes one realize that the author feels free bring in anything even tangentially relevant with barely a pretext. Her avoidance of quotation marks makes it hard to know who is speaking, but most of the characters are too poorly fleshed out for that to matter. Instead, you sense that everyone is merely a mouthpiece for Michaels' own voice, filling the book with pithy, elegant, but barely meaningful remarks such as this stand-alone paragraph: "He thought that only love teaches a man his death, that it is in the solitude of love that we learn to drown."

Anne Michaels will be compared to other Canadian poets whose novels go beyond normal prose. Her Egyptian setting calls to mind Michael Ondaatje's THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Some of her scenes on the St. Lawrence and many of her images remind me strongly of Jane Urquhart's A MAP OF GLASS. Michaels certainly belongs in their company, but until she finds a way to reconcile the narrative thrust of a novel with her own instincts as a poet, she will not be their equal.