Booker Prize 2024: ‘Held’ is unruly, unrelenting and beautiful

As routinely as the changing of the seasons, the annual Booker Prize — the leading literary award in the English-speaking world — is conferred to what is believed to be, in the judges’ view, the best-sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. 

This year, The Michigan Daily Book Review took it upon themselves to read and review the six novels shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. Although the overarching goal of delicately crafted literature has never and will never be minimized to a mere award, contests such as the Booker Prize time and again define the up-and-coming authors of our time and how they have rightfully claimed their place in the literary world. Our writers have devised detail-oriented reviews analyzing the literary artistry that lies behind each of these novels, deciding, in their own right, whether or not they merit their nomination. In a culminating article, our writers will come together to discuss which of the shortlisted stories they believe will be crowned winner in the end. 

We hope you enjoy this edition of the series and that we’ll see you again for the rest. 

— Graciela Batlle Cestero, Senior Arts Editor, and Camille Nagy, Books Beat Editor

Anne Michaels’ “Held” is, if nothing else, an experience. Michaels was a poet before a novelist, something that becomes evident almost as soon as the reader attempts to access her latest story — “attempts” being the operative word here because, despite its beauty, “Held” is genuinely exhausting to read.

Nothing about “Held” is orthodox. The language is exceedingly lyrical, and it’s common for paragraphs to break from the ones that precede them in subject and temporal orientation, existing on their own as tiny, fragmented portraits in a larger collage. This fact is charming at first; the novel’s enigmatic prose, philosophical musings and murky tanglings of timelines challenge the reader to pay attention, to read closely, to shout carpe diem and dive headlong into the fray, squeezing out every iota of meaning and wisdom. However, this proves a daunting task as Michaels steadily turns up the knob of the book’s indecipherability. 

“Held” opens with the line: “We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?” From there, it begins to tell the story of a young couple, John and Helena, whose picturesque life running a photography studio is interrupted and radically changed by World War I. What follows is a powerful meditation on what can be lost and found in war, a theme spread throughout the book. 

Dancing between their perspectives and jumping back and forth in time, John and Helena’s story ultimately culminates in a fantastical intrusion of the spirits of the dead into the world of the living, a miraculous and supernatural occurrence that poses questions to the reader not only about the nature of life and death but also the nature of truth and our responsibilities to fellow humans. 

This story, which makes up less than half of the novel, is then abruptly cut off. The remaining part is filled by the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of John and Helena, and, completely unexpectedly, Marie Curie. 

While the rest of the novel continues in much the same style and with the same profundity as the opening novella, it feels as though Michaels pruned a tree by cutting off half the trunk, leaving readers with just the branches. From this point on, any eagerness that initially compelled the reader is tempered by the novel’s subsequent lack of direction. 

“Held” never falters in its depth of meaning or provocation of thought, but it does begin to feel like a bit of a slog as characters, times, connections and events continue to shift and change erratically with no purpose or end in sight. When the end finally arrives it’s like a light at the end of a maze. Is there redemption? Salvation? A grand plan? Some cosmic razor that cuts through all of the tangled threads? It’s unclear, but at least it’s over. 

All that being said, “Held” is, above all, beautiful. It is only Anne Michaels’ third book in the last three decades, and the proof of more than a decade’s worth of work bleeds through every page of the novel. Every single line is meticulously crafted and worthy of not just a once-over but a second, third or fourth look. The only reason “Held” is an arduous read is that it would be a crime to skim or skip even a single page, so deeply has Michaels steeped her novel in the sublimity of its language. 

“Held” is not a long book, but it is formidable. There is no world whose inhabitants are not superhumans in which this could ever be described as a casual read, nor should it be one. “Held” is meant to be battled with, puzzled over and marveled at. All readers will have their opinions, but just as Lincoln declared that Gettysburg could not be consecrated with a speech, “Held” cannot be added to or detracted from with a read — it was consecrated by its creation. 

Daily Arts Contributor Ethan Rogers can be reached at ethanrog@umich.edu

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