Infinite Gradation

Overview

Infinite Gradation is an astonishing meditation on the mystery at the heart of our mortality. In lines as precise and profound as any Michaels has written, Infinite Gradation movingly explores the nature of responsibility in extremis and the forms it takes—it is about hope in art, what art makes of death, and bears witness to the love and lives of visual artists and writers who have made work at the limits of experience.Infinite Gradation finds its way to a most powerful solace. (Michaels embraces mortality through three great artists, recently dead, who were her confidants: the sculptor Eva Hesse, the painter Jack Chambers, and Claire Wilks, print maker and sculptor.)

Reviews

"Searing the mind with stunning images while seducing with radiant prose, this brilliant first novel [Fugitive Pieces] is a story of damaged lives and the indestructibility of the human spirit.... A bestseller in Canada, the novel will make readers yearn to share it with others, to read sentences and entire passages aloud, to debate its message, to acknowledge its wisdom." —Publishers Weekly "Michaels's long poem [Correspondences] is calm and challenging. She writes with an intensity that takes time to adjust to – she has always been an acquired taste. This is partly because her writing is unleavened by wit. And there are moments here where she teeters on the brink of pseudery such as the line in which she writes about "all invisible freedoms/contained in a pair of socks". She is not afraid of getting a laugh for the wrong reasons." —The Guardian

Author Biography

Anne Michaels of Toronto has published books in over forty-five countries, and has won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize (twice), the Governor-General's Award, and longlisted for the IMPAC Award (twice). Her novel, Fugitive Pieces, was adapted as a feature film. Her latest book of poetry, Correspondences, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2014. She is Toronto's Poet Laureate 2016-2018.