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Fugitive Pieces
  

Fugitive Pieces [Large Print] (Hardcover)

by Anne Michaels (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (92 customer reviews)

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Product Description

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Anne Michaels, an accomplished poet, has already published two collections of poetry in her native Canada. She turns her hand to fiction in an impressive debut novel, Fugitive Pieces. This is the story of Jakob Beer, a Polish Jew, translator, and poet who, as a child, witnessed his family's slaughter at the hands of the Nazis. Beer himself was found and smuggled out of Poland by Athos Roussos, a Greek archaeologist who carried him back to Greece and kept him there in precarious safety. After the war they emigrated together to Canada. Jakob's story is told through diaries discovered by Ben, a young man whose parents are Holocaust survivors and who is a vessel for their memories just as Jakob is the bearer of his own.

Fugitive Pieces is a book about memory and forgetting. How is it possible to love the living when our hearts are still with the dead? What is the difference between what historical fact tells us and what we remember? More than that, the novel is a meditation on the power of language to free our souls and allow us to find our own destinies.



Books in Canada

In Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels alchemizes anger into art. She tells the story of Jakob Beer who survived the Nazi massacre of his family in Poland when he was seven but, at the age of sixty, he is struck and killed by a car in Athens. Before his death, he had begun to write his memoirs, and these make up the first two-thirds of the book. The last sections are narrated by Ben, a young man who was introduced to Jacob by Maurice Salman, Jacob's oldest and dearest friend. Maurice has asked Ben to travel to the Greek island of Idhra to retrieve Jakob's journals. What he finds is much more than what he goes for.

Fugitive Pieces is about many things: the redemptive power of poetry, the complexity of a single life, the irrevocable fist-print of brutality on human consciousness. It's about love, both its failure and its success. It's about gut-wrenching events depicted without the slightest trace of sensationalism. But perhaps, most of all, it is about every person's own inevitable connection with humanity.

The book is beautifully written, Michaels the poet being everywhere evident, and it is unsettling in the best possible way-like turbulent water disturbing what lies in the depths. Eva Tihanyi(Books in Canada) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.


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Customer Reviews

92 Reviews
5 star:
 (40)
4 star:
 (21)
3 star:
 (9)
2 star:
 (10)
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (92 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Just a Little Too Poetic for This Reader's Taste, Jun 12 2008
By Teddy (Richmond, BC) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Fugitive Pieces (Audio CD)
The book opens with Jakob Beer as a seven-year-old child hiding in the bog in order to escape the Nazis. His family did not escape and were killed. Jakob was found by Athos Roussos, who smuggled him out of Poland and brought young Jakob to live with him in Greece. After the war, they immigrated to Canada. Jakob later becomes a poet and translator. The story is told by Ben, who discovered Jakob's diaries, a man whose parents are Holocaust survivors.

This is primarily a story about memory, love, and loss. Anne Michaels is an accomplished poet, which is really demonstrated in this, her first novel. Every sentence is carefully crafted poetry. Her descriptions have great depth and make the reader see the great beauty and great horror.

This book is not a fast read. I found myself having to stop and ponder a lot. This was both negative and positive for me. I am not a huge fan of poetry, so in that sense this book was too lyrical for me. However, by being forced to stop and ponder I found some wonderful pearls.

I saw the movie version, which is what prompted me to read this book. The movie was a gem and I loved it. Sometimes it takes an overly lyrical novel to make a great film. It is very rare that I like the film version better than a book, but this is one of those cases.

I'm glad I read the book. I got to explore the characters more deeply. Now I want to see the movie again.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars something to think about, Dec 1 2003
This review is from: Fugitive Pieces (Audio CD)
I am a teenager and I understand this book so I'm sure the people that call it boring or "flawed" didn't really think about it very hard. I have heard many accusations that this book was flawed or sloppy in the plotline. First of all, how can a book, especially one so poetic and deep, be flawed? It's like saying Picasso made a mistake in one of his paintings. If you see the plotline as being broken then you missed the point of the book. It takes you beyond the story, or at least it is supposed to in my opinion. The poetry of the book is a window to the deep meanings of the book. For example, the relationship between death and memory. The characters and storyline are only there to display the meaning. If you read this book, it is for the meaning, not the story, though the story is very moving. The best thing about Fugitive Pieces is that it is NOT TYPICAL. It's creative, emotional, and original; the ingredients for a true classic.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Amazing Book I've Ever Read, Feb 1 2009
By Clyo Beck (Tarpon Springs, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Fugitive Pieces (Paperback)
Anne Michael's beautifully written Fugitive Pieces is in a class all by itself. I drank it in, like an elixir.

My husband, who pursued a doctorate in philosophy and cannot be bothered reading most fiction, picked it up afterwards, finished it, and declared it exceptional.

Somehow Michaels has managed to write page-turning prose that has the flavor of poetry. This author is, indeed, an artist.
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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Novels Like this are Rare
The imagery in this book is in a league of its own. I'm not the least bit surprised to see that the author is a poet as well. Read more
Published on Nov 22 2007 by R. de Almeida

5.0 out of 5 stars Life Through War
This entertaining page-turner was a pure joy to experience. Rarely does a novel come along that perfectly incorporates history with fiction to produce a piece of literature that... Read more
Published on Mar 21 2003 by Tom Kapsimalis

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerfully Moving Poetry in Prose
This book will be a classic. Anne Michaels has written the best book I have ever read! Read it!
It is amazing.
The diction, literary devises, etc. Read more
Published on Nov 21 2002 by J Bruner

1.0 out of 5 stars A 13 year-old's point of view
The beginning of this book was greatly written, but throughout the rest of the book I was lost. It kept switching from different perspectives and to different times. Read more
Published on Mar 18 2002 by Cindy Willson

5.0 out of 5 stars Altering
This is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. The power of her poetry, her words, is astounding. It was like waking from a dream...
Published on Feb 10 2002 by Marc J. Fine

2.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful prose, lousy novel
Fugitive Pieces is filled with stunningly written prose that makes you stop and ponder. Although I appreciate the prose, the book lacks any type of plot, and the characters are... Read more
Published on Jan 8 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching
The novel Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels is brilliantly written. This is novel that it not read, but felt. Read more
Published on Sep 14 2001 by Angie L. Ruth

1.0 out of 5 stars extremely heavy-handed and needlessly grim
Subtle and restrained are not words one would use to describe this first novel by Canadian Anne Michaels. Read more
Published on Sep 4 2001 by reader

5.0 out of 5 stars the weight and lightness of being
When poets try to write novels, they sometimes fail, since the ability of poets to find deep meaning in words and phrases cannot always be sustained for greater length of novels... Read more
Published on Sep 2 2001 by Ben Orlove

1.0 out of 5 stars Mawk and Hooey
Not one believeable gesture of honest writing can be found in this novel filled with supposed lyric pyrotechnics. Read more
Published on Jul 30 2001 by h_wystan

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