The Winter Vault
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
From the Orange Award-winning writer of Fugitive Pieces
'Michaels is a novelist of unusual and compelling power' The Times
'Read this book like poetry, or rather hear it like music ... Anne Michaels guides us to the top of some extraordinary peaks of feeling and perception' Independent
'Writing of dangerously beautiful intensity ... magnificent' Sunday Telegraph
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Egypt, 1964. The great temple at Abu Simbel must be dismantled and resurrected high above the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. This daunting task is overseen by Avery, a young engineer who, at the same time, is carefully building a life with his new wife, Jean.
But not everything can be saved once the floodgates have opened: villages will be deluged, thousands will be exiled from their homes, and graves will be moved. And when Avery and Jean suffer a terrible loss of their own, they begin their separate journeys through the landscape of grief.
Weaving historical moments with the quiet intimacy of human lives, The Winter Vault is the story of a husband and a wife trying to find their way back to each other; of people and nations displaced; and of the myriad means by which we all seek out a place to call home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
