Booker Prize review: In ‘Held’, the moments of transcendence that bind us to one another

Anne Michaels is certainly not a case of the poet “best met in poems,” for that would be a hasty verdict. The world seems to be callously divided over her newly Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Held. Some have gone so far as to reprimand her for failing to comply with an author's “responsibility” to engage their readers. The case in point is not as simplistic as modern readers’ aversion to abstraction. It is a much broader and peppery phenomenon – that of a poet-novelist, who considering the pace at which things are moving, deserves a separate academic discipline.

Michaels publishes a novel every 13 or 14 years, and the most recent one first and foremost poses a question: How does one bear witness to both the visible and the unseen forces that shape our lives? She writes, “We can only think about the unknown in terms of the known…The past exists as a present moment.” She invites us into a liminal space, a realm where memory, history, and love coexist.

In today’s literary world, the role of a poet-novelist, like Michaels, is a unique one. Often, writers are expected to stake their claim on a particular narrative whether through stark realism, biting political commentary, or immersive...

Read more