The people that you meet, whether you believe in fated paths or not, invariably shape your life. This also applies to the books you meet. If you are a writer, or have a strong connection to language, you go one further and recognize the authors as the shapers. Today, after hearing murmurs of her and her perfection, I have finally met (read) Anne Michaels.
An old university friend of mine first recommended me to her. "Read her!" he said,"she writes maybe one book every five years but people wait for them because they are perfect." Tonight I took a huge bite out of Fugitive Pieces, her debut and the winner and nominee of almost every lit prize known to man.
Michaels lives in Toronto, and she is actually the aunt of a close friend of an ex-boss of mine. How cool is that? (Yes, distant distant relation, but still...perhaps one day I will have some way of gaining an interview.)
Every line felt like home. I'm not trying to flatter myself, but I felt like I was reading my own stuff - familiar like a sister; stuff that came from an older and better me. I'm not talking about subject or story, I'm talking about voice. Maybe she's just that good at connecting with her readers, but I have definitely found my new lit hero (sorry Big Annie Proulx). Again, I have no major sociological, human, or psychological loss/connection with the proper subject matter, but one line of a tertiary character's really hit me flat and real: "write to save yourself, and someday you'll write because you've been saved."
This next statement may sound grilled cheese, but that line just killed me because whenever I am finding it hard to punch on with the motherlode monstrosity of a project I have been chasing for years, I just remind myself: this writing is for survival. From there, I can go on.
Thank you, Anne. I am going to read everything you have ever shared.
If you don't like her writing, you don't know what you are talking about.
