The impeded memory in the fiction of Anne Michaels

This article examines the representation of trauma in Anne Michaels's novel, Fugitive Pieces. More specifically, we will deal with the impact that trauma has on autobiographical memory, while delving into the correspondences and networks between language and consciousness. Anne Michaels's work gives a penetrating insight into the shattering effects of trauma on the victim's cognitive, emotional and linguistic capacities and how these memories hinder the retrieval, acceptance and transmission of the past. The subject's inability to construct a coherent narrative out of traumatic events motivates mental blankness and a great complexity of memory symptoms that will be closely examined throughout this paper..