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The Winter Vault (2009)

by Anne Michaels(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0307270823 (ISBN13: 9780307270825)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Knopf

review 1: Having read Fugitive Pieces, I was eager to read Michaels' second novel. Here the plot is less compelling, but the language is pure poetry. Recounting the story of an engineer involved in rescuing the ancient pharaoh's tomb, Abu Simbal, from the rising waters of the dammed Nile, and the engineer's young wife, the narrative consists of a series of conversations in which the main characters recount memories of their early lives. It's a brilliant effect: the stories unfold backward in time. Michaels' attention to historic detail makes it real. The story suggests tenderness is a word more incorruptible than love.
review 2: The writing in this book is unlike anything I have ever read before. The writer somehow takes us seamlessly from place to place as the heroine f... moreollows her father and her sweetheart who are both engineers, building dams and diverting rivers. It is rather like a maze and as each river gets diverted, people are displaced, whole towns disappear beneath water, the ecology is disturbed often for the worst. I am not sure if the author's purpose was to write a romance or show us that in our demand for water, we should not dam up the rivers. I found it somewhat depressing and tedious to read. less

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