A book of developing relationships, feelings, loss, healing, perfect and imperfect partners.
After getting past the confusing beginning I discovered fields of enchanting poetic language.
Exquisite, delicious, poetic descriptions, painting of details of people and places …
“In Michaela's face, the loyalty of generations, perhaps the devotion of a hundred Kievan women for a hundred faithful husbands, countless evenings in close rooms under sheets, discussing family problems; a thousand intimacies, dreams of foreign lands, first nights of love, nights of love after long years of marriage. In Michaela's eyes, ten generations of history, in her hair the scents of fields and pines, her cold, smooth arms carrying water from springs. . . .” p178
What a vast spread and depth of knowledge and experience the author exhibits. The introduction of so many historical people gave the story reality.
Many of the descriptive passages evoked memories for me:
"Most discover absence for themselves; trees are ripped out and sorrow floods the clearing. Then we know what we loved." p233. ( )

So good I don't know how to do it justice in a review. Beautiful language and quite thoughtful. I am a sucker for this sort of fragmented, poetic writing, looking for truths beyond narrative. This volume is full of sentences I want to quote and remember, but removing them from context would, I fear, diminish them. ( )

FIVE STARS for the Jakob Beer book; barely 2-3 Stars for the tacked on Ben section.

For me, the book could have been way more extended before the death of Athos.

And, sure wish all The Good Ones, from Jakob's parents and sister, Bella, to Athos,
and on to Jakob and Michaela and their unborn Bel and Bella.

Even though the author prepared us for Jakob's death in the Prelude,
once immersed in the frightening tale, it was forgotten until after Athos death
and Ben's goofy hunt, involving not the wife who loved him but absurd intrusion of Petra.

Who cares to read about their boring sex?!? ( )

Gorgeous writing but the story didn't go anywhere; I spent so long getting to know one character before suddenly he was dropped for another one... ( )

Fugitive Pieces is a tour de force that must be consumed slowly and savored, like a good wine or a piece of New York cheesecake. It is the story of Jakob Beer, a Jewish child saved from the holocaust by a Greek stranger. In a style that is beautiful and stark at the same moment, Michaels ferrys us through Jakob’s life as he deals with his loss and its impact on his future.

When Jakob’s story is complete, and you feel the book has reached its logical end, Michaels pulls a rabbit out of the hat and introduces some new magic in the guise of Ben, the child of holocaust survivors who is touched in a profound way by Jakob. Ben is proof that the influence of an individual can outlast his life, that a life can mean more than we know, that our own grief can assuage someone else’s.

The night you and I met, Jakob, I heard you tell my wife that there's a moment when love makes us believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief, you said, is the weight of a sleeping child.

For grief is so often memory, and memory is what extends us beyond the limits of our corporeal bodies. No one would protest the burden of carrying a sleeping child.

I marked numerous passages in my reading. I stopped and reread paragraphs because the beauty they expressed was too profound to be satisfied by only a single reading.

As for your brother's unhappiness, I'm naive enough to think that love is always good, no matter how long ago, no matter the circumstances. I'm not old enough yet to imagine the instances where this isn't true and where regret outweighs everything.

and

She knows as well as I that history only goes into remission, while it continues to grow in you until you're silted up and can't move. And you disappear into a piece of music, a chest of drawers, perhaps a hospital record or two, and you slip away, forsaken even by those who claimed to love you the most.

There are myriad holocaust stories, but the best are the ones that remind us of our humanity, what we share, and that, as Donne told us, “any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

This is an excellent holocaust tale.
( )