Adult book club: Held

Join fellow community members for a discussion of Held by Anne Michaels.

Participants can attend at the library or via Zoom. All are welcome!

Registration is required by 12 p.m. on the day of the discussion. For those attending virtually, the Zoom link will be sent to the email address you used to register. The meeting link and reading guide will be emailed on the day of the event.

We have a limited number of copies for registrants to borrow, based on the order that they register. Registrants will be contacted if a copy is available. If all of the copies are spoken for, you can try to find one by:

• Placing a hold on a regular circulating copy in the NVCL catalogue;
• Checking at other local libraries, such as North Vancouver District Library or West Vancouver Memorial Library. 

Do you have questions or need help finding a copy? Email info@nvcl.ca or call 604-998-3450.

About the book

"1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast—as the snow falls.

"1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

"So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. This resonance through time—not only of actions but also of feelings and perceptions—desire in its many forms—are at the heart of this novel’s profound investigation” [publisher].