It's not until the second half of Anne Michaels's new novel that the significance of its enigmatic, ominous title is revealed.
A winter vault, we learn, is a building where the dead are stored in cold climates until the ground thaws enough for their interment. “The winter dead wait,” a character explains, “for the earth to relent and receive them.” It is an image that resonates within the acoustic of this fine novel in a variety of ways – including the circumstances of its publication.
The Winter Vault, by Anne Michaels, McClelland & Stewart, 336 pages, $32.99
Michaels first came to the forefront of Canadian letters with the publication of Fugitive Pieces, her debut novel, which was successful almost beyond measure, not just in this country but the world over.
I should admit to being a fan, to having done all the same things that people do upon first reading Fugitive Pieces. I read pages aloud. I underlined passages, went back and asterisked them, then went back and underlined them again.
And I waited for a second novel. But none came. It has been 13 years. Now, finally, like something exhumed from the distant past, comes The Winter Vault .
Has it been worth the wait?
It has.
We pick up the story in Egypt, just as the Aswan High Dam is being built. Designed to prevent the Nile from flooding, the dam will divert the great and ancient river, and in the process create Lake Nassar. It will also obliterate the ancient nation of Nubia, “a country without boundaries, currency, or government, yet an ancient country nonetheless.”
In addition to relocating the Nubians, there is the question of how to salvage the ancient temples at Abu Simbel of the Pharaoh Rameses II and his queen, Nefertari. This is what brings Avery Escher and his new wife, Jean, to Egypt. Avery is one of the engineers hired to oversee the preservation effort, the cutting up of the massive, ancient stonework into blocks, and its subsequent reconstruction. It is a project fraught with ambivalence.
“Simulation is the perfect disguise,” observes the disembodied narrative voice in which a great deal of the novel is rendered. “The replica, which is meant to commemorate, achieves the opposite effect: It allows the original to be forgotten.” What is it that Avery is really doing? Is he saving the temples? Or rendering their erasure more complete?
The Winter Vault is a beautifully written though somewhat difficult book
From Egypt, we are catapulted back in time to Ontario, where preparations are under way for construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The parallels are clear: Another river is being diverted in the name of progress, another group of innocent people are being forced from their homes and way of life.
A younger Avery is there as well, one of the engineers engaged in constructing the dam. Here he meets Jean, as she is making her way along the first part of the already diverted river collecting samples of the plant life, for posterity.
“I'm keeping a record,” she tells Avery. “I'm going to transplant these particular plants, this particular generation.” It is a pivotal modulation, the moment when we begin to understand the wider coherence of the novel, that the real attraction between Avery and Jean is their shared conviction that the world, or parts of it, anyway, can be saved.
