Fugitive Pieces

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Summary: Poetry is not particularly useful to write a novel
Review: Beautiful images alone do not make a novel "We entered a territory of greater and greater tenderness, two lost souls alone on deck on a blank and limitless ocean, the wind howling of corners of the house, no lights to guide you and none to give our position away".

What makes this book fantastic is that you can select a page at random, and every paragraph is inspiring and intense. No matter what the author is describing that object, view or event is fully colored (even if it is a dark room) However, Ms. Michaels concentrates so much in style and detail that at the end she loses the big picture.

For example, nothing was added the storyline by suddenly taking Jakob out of it, and placing an admired or his works, a complete stranger to him who out of nowhere is given full access to his house in Greece.

Why does this mysterious character suddenly abandons his wife of whom he is in love? Moreover when the person who was captivated by Jakob personality is she and not him. Such development is amateurish under any standard.

The same can be said regarding his American lover in Greece. What was the purpose of that romance in the nature of the story? None according to my perception.

What could have been a great novel is damaged by a very silly incoherent ending.

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Summary: Fugitive Pieces
Review: Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces demonstrates her beautiful use of language but also her lack of imagination and creativity to develop a captivating story. Her examples of imagery and metaphors rank high and are among the few points of the novel that kept my attention. The plot was somewhat predictable and contained very little that connected me to the characters which would have caused me to appreciate the plot more. The thoughts of the main characters, Jakob and Ben, jumped constantly from topic to topic and didn't focus on any particular subject at one time. The themes brought out by Michaels are notable, as are the ways she illustrates them. However, the book is very difficult to follow and very ambiguous at times. Even though the use of language is excellent, the ambiguity and confusing jumps found throughtout the entirety of the novel overwhelm the language. I would recommend Fugitive Pieces only to those who find language more interesting than plot and interpret meaning easily.

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Summary: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
Review: All throughout "Fugigtive Pieces" Anne Michaels uses many different images that bring vivid pictures to mind, creating themes that appear and reappear all through the book. By doing this she creates moods for that chapter or section, which draws the novel to the heart. How Michaels tells the story while using past memories and feelings of the narrator to reveal his sadness, helplessness, fear or happiness is brilliant. Thus it makes the novel more real, rather than just telling a story with no deeper emotions. The book also shows how the horrors of the Holocaust changed and ruined the joy of life for the fortunate, yet unlucky survivors.

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Summary: Muttering to Oneself is NOT Literature
Review: While a few diamonds can be retreived from this haze of ambiguous thoughts, emotions, and passions, Fugitive Pieces proves to be nothing more than a disjointed misadventure into the typical cross-cultural themes of such attempted think-pieces. Though one can never hear enough of such truths as self-acceptance, interdependence, and the wonderfully bonding powers of love, Anne Michaels takes these to sickening degrees. Sadly a truly inspiring story lurks beneath. A reader can easliy be provoked to tears when attempting to relate with the difficult physical and mental obstacles Jakob Beer must overcome throughout the course of the novel. And when Jakob has finally found his way with his new wife Michaela, one is overcome again with overwhelmingly joyful tears. Yet this heart-wrenching story is not at all the main focus of the novel. Instead we are asked to enjoy Anne Michaels' contemplations of how Jacob Beer feels, a difficult task. Fugitive Pieces is a deathly tiring novel, surpassing even the thickest Michner Novel. Only for those with such a death wish would I suggest Fugitive Pieces.

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Summary: Time, Language, and Memories
Review: Through a captivating style, Anne Michales writes of the joys and sorrows of time, language and memories in a man's life. Her way with words such as "Time is a blind guide" evokes one's every thoughts and emotions to look deeper into the meaning. Jacob Beer, the protagonist, lived in the Holocaust era, and through the book, the reader enjoys watching him grow through time, language and memories. The tragedy's of a childhood will stick with Jacob Beer as he learns a whole new way of life.

I enjoyed this book because of the writing style Anne Michaels holds. It was that of which would intrigue one's thoughts even after the book was put aside.

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Summary: An Author with Unique Descriptive Writing
Review: Anne Michaels uses a unique descriptive style to bring the story alive for the reader. Her style of description almost makes certain moments in the story seem so real, that the book transforms into a children's pop-up book.A quote form the book on page 251:"Truth gradually grows in us, like a musician who plays a piece again and again until suddenly he hears it for the first time." I really liked how Anne Michaels chose to describe instances in the book using her creativity like the quote above. I also liked all of the intersting quotes in the book that had a valauble lesson to teach. Another quote fromt the book on page 121 " The best teacher lodges an intent in the mind but in the heart." The book was full of insightful quotes that assisted to make the book more intriqing. Fugitive pieces is a fantasitic story that contains great descriptive writing and insight into the horror of the Hollocaust.The story was able to give the reader a more personal veiw of the affects the Hollocaust had on the people involved.

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Summary: Fugitive Pieces-------A magical two-star novel
Review: "Fugitive Pieces" is the story of two men from different generations whose lives have been transformed by war. The young boy, Jacob Beer, who is rescued from a war-torn Polish city during World War II by the geologist/humanist, Athos Roussos and taken to an island in Greece. The reason why this book is two-star instead of five-star is because it loses the reader's interest about 3 chapters into the book. All of a sudden it's a young man learning from a wise scholar who is willing to teach, and it gets boring. "Fugitive Pieces" begins very strong and it brilliantly portrays the emotions and atmosphere of what war and killing was for the Jews. Also, different imagery techniques were used to make the reader really think about what he/she was reading. BUT this book got too tedious and predictable after half way through. It never stopped skipping from person to person, memory to memories and past to present to future. Every character that was introduced shared their life story, it seemed, before they played any sort of role in the book, if any. It produced freshness and showed creativity when the speaker's tone changed, from Jacob to Ben, yet there was too much repetition between characters because Ben related too closely to Jacob. Now you were reading the novel from the beginning again. Dividing this book into two speaker's tones may have been a key moment in the story but it was too late to save the reader's interest for the book.

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Summary: Review of Fugitive Pieces by Forrest Pangborn
Review: Anne Michaels' novel entitled Fugitive Pieces tells an interesting and intriguing story. Although it relates a somewhat typical story of post-Holocaust life for a Jewish child, Michaels captured my attention with her deep imagery and poetic language. The use of the imagery creates many dramatic effects and helps convey a number of different themes and feelings throughout the book. I recommend Fugitive Pieces for anyone with an interest in the Holocaust and a love for poetry.

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Summary: to write or to ramble
Review: It is a terrible thing when people write a book about a very important point in history and butcher it, all in the name of becoming an author or an artist. Michaels did this with fugitive peices, she rambled incoherently about the horrors of the german's treatment of the jews and she twisted somthing real into a perverse but polite litte story about a boy. All in All I would have to say this is a terrible and over-hyped book. It is certainly not worth reading.

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Summary: Fugitive Pieces
Review: The novel is a brilliant and focused masterpiece on the effects of the holocaust. Anne Michaels uses profound thought and depth while conveying her message of silence, death and memory throughout the novel. She centers on three main characters and follows how their lives are changed and effected by their unchangeable pasts. The novel proves the effect one's life has on another and how we are able to lift eachother out of the past that has "bogged" us down. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about history and the struggles and triumphs of the human soul.