<![CDATA[Consolation: A Novel]]>

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“There is a vast part of this city with mouths buried in it . . . . Mouths capable of speaking to us. But we stop them up with concrete and build over them and whatever it is they wanted to say gets whispered down empty alleys and turns into wind. . . .” These are among the last words of Professor David Hollis before he throws himself off a ferry into the frigid waters of Lake Ontario. A renowned professor of “forensic geology,” David leaves in his wake both a historical mystery and an academic scandal. He postulated that on the site where a sports arena is about to be built lie the ruins of a Victorian boat containing an extraordinary treasure: a strongbox full of hundreds of never-seen photographs of early Toronto, a priceless record of a lost city. His colleagues, however, are convinced that he faked his research materials. Determined to vindicate him, his widow, Marianne, sets up camp in a hotel overlooking the construction site, watching and waiting for the boat to be unearthed. The only person to share her vigil is John Lewis, fiancé to her daughter, Bridget. An orphan who had come to love David as his own father, John finds himself caught in a struggle between mother and daughter–all the while keeping a dark secret from both women. Interwoven into the contemporary story is another narrative set in 1850s: the tale of Jem Hallam, a young apothecary struggling to make a living in the harsh new city so he can bring his wife and daughters from England. Crushed by ruthless competitors, he develops an unlikely friendship with two other down-on-their-luck Torontonians: Samuel Ennis, a brilliant but dissolute Irishman, and Claudia Rowe, a destitute widow. Together they establish a photography business and set out to create images of a fledgling city where wooden sidewalks are put together with penny nails, where Indians spear salmon at the river mouth and the occasional bear ambles down King Street, where department stores display international wares and fine mansions sit cheek-by-jowl with shantytowns. Consolation moves back and forth between David Hollis’s legacy and Jem Hallam’s struggle to survive, ultimately revealing a mysterious connection between the two narratives. Exquisitely crafted and masterfully written, Michael Redhill’s superlative book reveals how history is often transformed into a species of fantasy, and how time alters the contours of even the things we hold most certain. As complex and layered as the city whose story it tells, Consolation evokes the mysteries of love and memory, and what suffering the absence of the beloved truly means.

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2006

Consolation: a Novel

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5 0 false false Sat Apr 25 08:56:44 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 25 09:14:17 -0700 2009
(Consolation, 435)

Consolation changed the way I look at my Toronto, the city where ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Sep 07 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Feb 12 09:38:18 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 12 09:38:18 -0800 2008
Before I offer a look inside (don't worry, as always, no spoile...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 11:08:44 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 11:09:20 -0700 2007
As regular readers know, all this month I'm doing a special concentration here on the nominees for the 2007 Booker Prize, basically the British version of the Pulitzer (and a...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Sep 11 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 23 07:14:06 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 12 13:37:01 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Dec 01 11:42:19 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 11:47:32 -0800 2008 1 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 21 09:10:21 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 01 21:38:03 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Feb 08 14:57:36 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 15:01:19 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Wed Aug 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 28 17:55:40 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 05 16:30:29 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Jan 07 17:06:54 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 07 17:07:39 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Dec 06 13:24:46 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 06 13:24:46 -0800 2007
Consolation
by Michael Redhill (Little, Brown)

Lou Gehrig’s disease again! In this case, a local historian, suffering from the malady, posits, to public ridicule, that a trove of photographs of early Toronto lies beneath a landfill. Redhill, auth...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu May 28 21:07:31 -0700 2009 Thu May 28 21:08:33 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Dec 27 21:48:17 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 27 21:48:34 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Tue Dec 11 18:46:46 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 09 07:37:06 -0800 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Apr 12 06:14:25 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 12 06:15:03 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Jul 29 21:06:06 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 19 09:58:01 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 29 21:06:06 -0700 2008 i like all the details about the photography profession and the actual names of streets and shops
it's specially exiting when I walk by one of them!!
what I mostly ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 28 12:22:59 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 11 12:19:04 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Mar 11 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 08 10:23:29 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 11 14:59:51 -0700 2008
Nonetheless, I enjoyed this. There are two dimensions to the story - one in the mid-1800's and...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jul 07 10:22:32 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 29 11:45:07 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Dec 02 21:01:20 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 20 18:12:15 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Aug 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 23 09:46:22 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 15 07:26:46 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=84160