Booker Prize finalist: Held traces grief, memory and longing across four generations

CANADIAN author Anne Michaels’ Held spans over a century, guiding readers through a wide array of settings – from a World War I battlefield to the Gulf of Finland in 2025. The novel unfolds in interconnected vignettes, each introducing a new place and a set of characters across four generations. Gradually, readers discover subtle links between these characters, creating a web of connections that binds the narrative.

Michaels uses poetic language throughout, with the text of some chapters broken up into lyrical snippets to reflect the characters’ experiences. (Michaels was a poet before she became a novelist.)

For example, John, the first protagonist, reflects on his traumatic experiences as an injured soldier during World War I through brief snippets, showing how fragmented and scattered his mental state was during such a tumultuous period. The novel also employs rich metaphors and rhetorical questions to demonstrate his conflicted mind.