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Article Evaluation: Fugitive Pieces

1. Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you? Everything in the article is relevant to the topic, but it is all general information. There is no in depth information about the story's plot, characters, or critic and audience reception. Nothing on the article is distracting, the only obvious aspect about the article is the limited information it contains.
2. Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? The article is completely neutral. It is all direct facts about the book that includes an accurate summary about the story. I also noticed that there is no discourse on the talk page.
3. Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? I think there are viewpoints that are underrepresented.
4. Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article? The links do work but they hyperlink to very broad websites that give basic information.
5. Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? The only two sources that are cited seem reliable. One is from University of Toronto and the other is from BBC. However, the information given is, again, very limiting.
6. Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added? No information seems to be put of date, but I think plenty could be added into this article.
7. Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? There is no discussion in the Talk Pages. Maybe I can start one.
8. How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? From what I can tell, it is not apart of any WikiProjects.

Fugitive Pieces: (Sections I want to add/ edit)

1. Overview
2. Plot
3. Characters
4. Style and Structure
5. Reception
6. Criticism
7. Film Adaptation
8. References

Sources

1. Kirkus A book review which I can use for the critical reception portion of the article.
2. Blood and Soil in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces: The Pastoral in Holocaust Literature Includes information on Michaels's writing style.
3. A Poetics of Testimony and Trauma Healing in Anne Michaels's Fugitive Pieces
4. The geography of memory: haunting and haunted landscapes in contemporary Canadian Jewish writing
5. Metaphors of pain: the use of metaphors in trauma narrative with reference to Fugitive pieces
6. Anne Michaels and the affirmation of being in the poetics of suffering and trauma
7. “Every Moment Is Two Moments” Witnessing and the Poetics of Trauma in Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels
8. Writing at Its Limits: Trauma Theory in Relation to Anne Michaels's Fugitive Pieces

Article Draft

Fugitive Pieces is a novel by Canadian poet Anne Michaels. The story is divided into two sections. The first centers around Jakob Beer, a Polish Holocaust survivor while the second involves a man named Ben, the son of two Holocaust survivors. It was first published in Canada in 1996 and was published in the United Kingdom the following year. Since its publication, the novel has won awards such as Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, Orange Prize for Fiction, Guardian Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize. For over two years the novel has been on the Canadian Books bestseller list as well as garnering international success which resulted in over 20 different language translations.

Plot

The novel is split into two sections: Book I and Book II.

Book I:

Jakob Beer is a 7 year old child of a Jewish family living in Poland. His house is stormed by Nazis; he escapes the fate of his parents and his sister, Bella, by hiding behind the wallpaper in a cabinet. He hides in the forest, by burying himself up to the neck in the soil. After some time, he runs into an archaeologist, Athos Roussos, working on Biskupin. Athos secretly takes him to Zakynthos in Greece. Athos is also a geologist, and is fascinated with ancient wood and stones. Jakob learns Greek and English, but finds that learning new languages erases his memory of the past. After the war, Athos and Jakob move to Toronto, where after several years Jakob meets Alexandra in a music library. Alex is a fast-paced, outspokenly philosophical master of wordplay. Jakob and Alex fall in love and marry, but the relationship fails because Alex expects Jakob to change too fast and abandon his past. Jakob dwells constantly on his memories of Bella, especially her piano-playing, and they end up divorcing. Jakob meets and marries Michaela, a much younger woman but one who seems to understand him, and with Michaela's help, he is able to let go of Bella. Together they move to Greece into the former home of several generations of the Roussos family.

Book II:

The second part of the book is told from the perspective of Ben, a Canadian professor of Jewish descent who was born in Canada to survivors of the Holocaust. In 1954 the family home in Weston, Ontario is destroyed by Hurricane Hazel. Ben becomes an expert on the history of weather, and marries a girl named Naomi. He is a big admirer of Jakob's poetry and respects the way he deals with the Holocaust, when Ben himself has trouble coping with the horrors his parents must have endured. At the end of the novel, Ben is sent to retrieve Jakob's journals from his home in Greece, where Ben spends hours swimming in Jakob's past.

Main Characters

1. Jakob Beer -- The only survivor of his town who is found and rescued by Athos. He is an intelligent boy who later becomes a renown poet.
2. Athos Roussos -- A geologists who rescues Jakob and becomes his guardian. He teaches Jakob about the beauty of science and also the world.
3. Ben -- An admirer of Jakob and his poetry. He travels to Greece to find Jakob's journals.

Theme, style, and structure

Fugitive Pieces contains themes of trauma, grief, loss, and memory, primarily in relation to the Holocaust, which Michaels explores via metaphors such as nature. The work is told in a poetic style, which has caused some critics to view it as an elegy, which critics such as Donna Coffey feels re-imagines the literary telling of the Holocaust and of also nature. The story is told through two narratives, in the first part, Jakob's, then in the second part, Ben's, which are connected through one main event that had an effect on both narrators. John Mullan has stated that he feels that the book shows how the Holocaust and traumatic moments can impact generations of survivors and their family members. Fugitive Pieces also contains mentions of the senses, which are shown through an emphasis of Jakob hearing what happened to his family, rather than seeing the event take place, which in turns adds to his trauma and his inability to gain closure. Similarly, Ben has only heard stories but never had first hand experience. Michaels uses this to convey a paradox between what we hear, the language, and then the silence that follows due to the suffering and trauma of others.

Reception

Along with winning many awards, Michaels has received praise from multiple media outlets and academics such as University College London professor John Mullan and Michiko Kakutani.

Film Adaptation

Main article: Fugitive Pieces (film)

The novel has been made into a feature film produced by Robert Lantos through his Toronto-based Serendipity Point Films Inc. It opened at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. It is directed by Jeremy Podeswa based on his original screenplay adaptation of the Michaels novel. It stars Stephen Dillane as Jakob Beer and Rade Šerbedžija as Athos.