Held by Anne Michaels
While anchored in time and place—from 1908 Paris to 1951 London to 2025 Finland—the episodes making up this dazzling novel are free floating and timeless. The dates and geography suggest an epic sweep, but the stories are presented nonchronologically and don’t so much build on as echo each other, as Michaels uses the various interrelated characters to reach beyond individuals to something cosmic, just as her narrative lines move beyond the finite to the infinite. But this poet/novelist’s greatest theme and main character is language itself. Each page features lines to savor, ponder, and return to, as much for their lyricism as for their profundity on topics including love, memory, art, history, and war.