Received this 'uncorrected proof' paperback from a Bookmooch member in NH.

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A story of World War II as remembered and imagined by one of its a poet named Jakob Beer, traumatically orphaned as a young child and smuggled out of Poland, first to a Greek island (where he will return as an adult), and later to Toronto. It is the story of how, over his lifetime, Jakob learns the power of language -- to destroy, to omit, to obliterate, but also to restore and to conjure, witness and tell -- as he comes to understand and experience what was lost to him and of what is possible for him to regain.

This is also No. 104 on the 1001 books you must read before you die list.

Fugitive Pieces is a book about the holocaust and how it affected the survivors. However, it is not by any means a straight forward look at the devastation but is rather an oblique look through the eyes of a Jewish boy, Jakob, who was rescued from a Polish city during the war and taken to a Greek island by Athos, a geologist and scholar. After the war, Athos and Jakob move to Toronto where Jakob marries, divorces, and falls in love again. He often thinks of his sister Bella who disappeared during the war and dwells upon her memory. Jakob and his wife, Michaela, move back to Greece into the former house of Athos where he is able to focus on his poetry and try to forget the horrors of the war. The last part of the novel is told from the perspective of Ben, whose parents escaped the holocaust. He is an expert on weather and an admirer of Jakob's poetry. It is hard for him to cope with the horrors his parents went through, especially how it affected his father. Towards the end of the novel, Ben goes to Greece to try to recover Jakob's lost journals.

The novel is told through the use of lyrical and rhythmic language including relationships to the earth through history, geology and the weather. Anne Michaels is a poet and it definitely shows in her writing that can be quite compelling. However, she doesn't let the reader forget the nightmare of the holocaust by including some rather graphic descriptions of what could have happened to both Jakob's and Ben's family.

Sent to a Bookmooch.com member in MI. Enjoy!

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