In interviews regarding her new novel, The Winter Vault, Anne Michaels sets the stakes high for herself and her readers. Describing her goals to Eva Tihanyi, she expressed the need “to learn how to live better as a human being. To find a way to think about things that are essential to being a conscious, moral person.” There should result, she said, “a place for the reader inside these discussions. I think that often we live by a mess of generalities and untested beliefs. We need to pay attention, to be more precise about what we think and say. And it’s not enough to do no harm. One has to do good.” Ethical demands, then, motivate creator and audience as each addresses the historical and personal narratives offered in Michaels’s follow-up to her 1996 success Fugitive Pieces.
The historical context explored in The Winter Vault is complex and geographically diverse. The book begins with a meditation on the environmental and cultural calamity...
Norman Ravvin’s recent novel is The Joyful Child (Gaspereau Press, 2011). Previous books include a story collection, Sex, Skyscrapers and Standard Yiddish (Paperplates Books, 1997), and a volume of essays entitled A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity and Memory (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997). He lives in Montreal.
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