The Winter Vault, by Anne Michaels is a poignant and lovely written account of the lives of husband and wife Avery and Jean Escher. It is a novel that blends historical fact, and one that combines three historical events in one novel. The reader is a witness to the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, connecting Montreal and Lake Ontario. We are also witness to the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt. We also bear witness to the Holocaust.

The reader almost feels as if they are present when the St. Lawrence Seaway is built and when it was completed in 1959. We are privy to the most intimate of details during the tearing down and reconstruction efforts of the Nubian temple Abu Simbel in order to build the Aswan Dam. The threads of the word images are so strong and colorful that my senses were filled to capacity. Minute details are woven, and take forms that evoke intense emotions and immense visuals. Historical fact and accuracy is apparent within the intense and compelling content of the pages.

Avery and Jean’s story begins when they meet, and then in 1964 when, as newlyweds, they leave Toronto to live on a houseboat on the Nile while Avery oversees orderly destruction, and reconstruction of the temple.

Avery is an engineer, and he is part of a team that is tearing down and then reconstructing the temple, to a higher level, due to the rushing water that will ensue when the dam is completed. The analogies between Avery’s love of engineering and his love of Jean coincide, both seemingly occupying the same space. The separation of career, hobbies, identity and memories is almost nonexistent, as Avery’s memories are literally painted on Jean’s back. She is his canvas. This eventually becomes a problem in their marriage.

Jean is a passionate botanist who was raised by her father due to the death of her mother. She is obsessed with botany and everything relating to growth, from the minutest of cells to bacteria, etc. Her obsession and passion causes her to bring samples and cuttings of her mother’s garden with her wherever she settles. The growth of the plants symbolizes her mother’s nearness, her mother’s memory. Flowers are a symbolic force within the pages, symbolizing not only life, but death.

Actions versus consequences are played out with quantitative measurements, causing the logarithms of energy and nature to illuminate and diminish. Both Avery and Jean feel the death toll, the demeaning and diminishing of civilization and nature, in order to pursue the inevitability of modern man, science and technology. That is a strong theme that is woven throughout the book.

Jean and Avery experience an event that magnifies, amplifies and affects their lives in ways the reader doesn’t expect. How Michaels depicts it is astounding. This event causes them to separate and return to Canada, where Jean meets a Jewish-Polish artist who fills her soul with horrific images of the Holocaust, one of mankind’s most destructive, physical events against humanity. One in which witnessing and relating are crucial to the memory of those who were murdered, critical to the memory of those who looked the other way while destruction and horror surrounded them.

I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone, and won’t divulge any more of the story line. As it is, I have been careful not to divulge too much. Suffice it to say that it is filled with depth, an energy level that is strong, emotional intensity and linguistics that define the historical content in formats and contexts that are overwhelming.

Births and rebirths fill the lines. Love and grief combine, as does longing and loss. Dislocation, familial roots, relocation and memories are lost within the chasm of time and place, only to have the cycle repeat itself decades later. The memories resurface, and disintegrate. Michaels weaves an esoteric tapestry of time, filled with the essence of humanity and essence of destruction, not only physical and architectural destruction, but the destruction and loss of memories in the tapestry of time.

Michaels’ word imagery is strong, extremely magical and surreal, poetic and filled with a sense of time and place. She evokes an immediacy to return to the past in order to confront the present. She is an archivist and an architect, a poet and a historian. She is a masterful writer whose capacity to incorporate language and visuals is incredible, bringing the science of language to a poetic form, a poetic balance, within the building blocks of Literature. And, build Michaels does, brick by brick, inch by inch, word by word, in language that is enthralling and captivating. She layers her prose with more layers, creating a foundation of visual and linguistic power. Her sense of semantics is strong, enabling her to dissect the story line, much like the dissection of life in the Holocaust, the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the destruction and restructuring of Abu Simbel. All three events displaced individuals, and destroyed cities, villages, towns and the order of life. All three created devastation that was unseen by the eye. Yet, there was order within the devastation and destruction, there is a method to it, mapped and documented.

Concerning memory, Michaels message is concise and clear, leaving one to ponder this issue: The tearing down and then rebuilding of something of architectural significance is overpowered by the fact that the new structure will be the one remembered, not the original structure. Our memory of the origin lapses due to time lines. I am paraphrasing what she mentions in the book, and it is significant in my opinion. <a href="Actions versus consequences are played out with quantitative measurements, causing the logarithms of energy and nature to illuminate and diminish.

Both Avery and Jean feel the death toll, the demeaning of civilization, in order to pursue the inevitability of modern man, science and technology. That is a strong theme that is woven throughout The Winter Vault. “>Michaels basically demands that we consider this facet, where the archetype/prototype is replaced with a copy of the original.

Some readers might not understand the story or find it difficult to interpret, with its format that is filled to overflowing with imagery so vibrant, and language so scientific and poetic, simultaneously. At times it is difficult to follow due to the similes, metaphors and comparisons and contrasts. I found it to be cutting edge, sharp and creative. I did find myself going back and forth, rereading paragraphs in order to understand the dimension of the scene. That was not a negative in my perspective. I applaud Anne Michaels and her extraordinary efforts in not only researching, but penning this amazing and magnificent novel based on historical fact. Her weaving of this tapestry of time and place is flawless. She is masterful with her ability to infuse the pages with technical content, yet write with an almost reverent quality, and with the utmost of respect for the lives and the nature within the history of time. I know I will be reading this novel again, and not too far into the future. I highly recommend The Winter Vault.

As an aside: I remember traveling with my parents when I was an adolescent, to Montreal, and passing over the St. Lawrence River, and remember the awe I felt by the magnitude of it the Seaway. We traveled over it at the end of July 1959, a month after the official opening of the Seaway on June 26,1959, from Long Island, New York to Montreal, in order to visit relatives. I distinctly remember my father (who was doing the driving) being completely impressed by the Seaway. But, I wonder now, after my having reading this book, if he was cognizant of the displacement of so many lives, communities, homes, businesses, natural environments and habitats, etc., that had to be sacrificed in order to create such a structure.
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Saturday July 4, 2009- 12th of Tamuz, 5769