*Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels (Vintage Books, 1998, orig. 1996) ****

This extraordinary first novel by Canadian poet and professor Anne Michaels pierces the soul of what it means to learn from our language and from our past. It is the story of Jakob Beer, a Polish Jew , forced into hiding after watching the murder of his family by the Nazis. He is found by a Greek geologist and scholar, Athos Roussos, who takes the boy to his homeland, the island of Zakynthos, and continues to hide him, caring for him as if he were his own. After the war, Athos and Jakob travel to Canada where Athos takes a teaching position at the University of Toronto. His death plunges Jakob, now a young man, into the world of language as a means of unearthing truths and forces him to reconcile his life with the past as he realizes that ". . .to remain with the dead is to abandon them." Finally, the story introduces another Holocaust survivor who finds solace in Jakob's diaries following his death.

It is appropriate that a novel about longing and language would come from a poet. Michael's writing mimics a radiant canvas of her art. Passages overflowing with rich imagery hover over the pages--dropping chunks of wisdom at their conclusion. One need not appreciate poetry, however, to be swept up in this story's themes: love and loss as seen through the eyes of a child; the uncontrollable effect of our past on our future; connections drawn and then blurred between science and morality; and love's ability to bind us to what is significant. The story is sometimes somber. The magic of language, friendship, even love won't entirely erase the pain the characters suffer. This heartbreaking epiphany materializes in the final section of the novel and won't please every reader. But it is essential to Michael's story, emphasizing one of her most compelling messages: Love can heal, but we are often responsible for the direction it will take. As Athos remarks to Jakob to describe their fate: "It's a mistake to think it's the small things we control and not the large, it's the other way around. . . We can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see." Michaels illuminates the dark recesses of human folly while shining hope on our miracles. Fugitive Pieces will keep you breathless with its force and haunted by its engagement of the tragedies we face when we stifle love's power to ennoble the human condition.

*Editor's Note: This review was written by my daughter, Karen Frazier, because she first suggested the book to me and because she was particularly impressed by it. I am particularly impressed by her review!