“The second novel syndrome” is an albatross around the neck of every budding writer fortunate enough to have had a hit with their first. Anne Michaels’s debut novel, Fugitive Pieces (1996), was a particularly hard act to follow: shortlisted for the Giller Prize, winner of Britain’s Orange Prize for Fiction and Ontario’s Trillium Award, published in thirty countries and staying on Canadian bestseller lists for more than two years, it was even made into a feature film.

Wrestling with that albatross may be one reason it has taken Michaels thirteen years to publish The Winter Vault (McClel