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Reading in 2013: The Winter Vault

I finished reading The Winter Vault over a month ago. Then I wrote this post. But I didn't publish it because it is inadequate in its attempts to hint at how beautiful and poignant I found the book.

I loved The Winter Vault, by Anne Michaels.

A gentle, eloquent unfolding that centers around love and loss (as all stories do) and the travels of one particular couple, Avery and Jean. Toronto, Montreal, Holland Marsh - I love reading books set in places I can picture.

There is so much woven all around their propelling drama. The dislocation and relocation of entire cities. Architecture and engineering, creation & destruction, the temporality of art… grief that cannot be shared.


Did you know that in 1960, over 100,000 Nubians from Sudan and Egypt were relocated for the construction of the Aswan Dam?

Or that a few years earlier, 6,500 small-town inhabitants along the St. Lawrence River were moved for the construction of a power dam?

Neither did I.

I still think about these people, the unsettling and destabilization of families, the end of a way of living, the inevitable consequences on subsequent generations. I wonder whether the story of Sudan today could have been different.

And I still think about Avery and Jean, their parents, their losses, and their love.
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